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AN ESSAY
ON THE
DEVELOPMENT OP CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE.
LONDON :
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,
ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.
AN ESSAY
OX THE
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE.
BY
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.
OF THE ORATORY,
HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD.
OCULI MEI 1>EFECERT7NT IN SALUTARE TUUM.
NEW EDITION.
BASIL MONTAGU PICKEKING,
196, PICCADILLY.
1878.
TO THE
KEV. SAMUEL WILLIAM WAYTE, B.D.
PBESIDENT OP TRINITY COLLEGE, OXPOED.
MY DEAR PEESIDENT,
NOT from any special interest which I
anticipate you will take in this Volume, or any
sympathy you will feel in its argument, or
intrinsic fitness of any kind in nay associating
you and your Fellows with it, —
But, because I have nothing besides it to
offer you, in token of my sense of the gracious
compliment which you and they have paid me
in making me once more a Member of a College
dear to me from Undergraduate memories ; —
Also, because of the happy coincidence, that
whereas its first publication was contemporaneous
with my leaving Oxford, its second becomes, by
virtue of your act, contemporaneous with a
recovery of my position there :—
Vl DEDICATION.
Therefore it is that, without your leave or
your responsibility, I take the bold step of
placing your name in the first pages of what, at
my age, I must consider the last print or reprint
on which I shall ever be engaged.
I am, my dear President,
Most sincerely yours,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.
February 23, 1878.
PEEFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1878.
THE following pages were not in the first instance written
to prove the divinity of the Catholic Religion, though
ultimately they furnish a positive argument in its behalf,
but to explain certain difficulties in its history, felt before
now by the author himself, and commonly insisted on by
Protestants in controversy, as serving to blunt the force of
its primd facie and general claims on our recognition.
However beautiful and promising that Religion is in
theory, its history, we are told, is its best refutation ; the
inconsistencies, found age after age in its teaching, being
as patent as the simultaneous contrarieties of religious
opinion manifest in the High, Low, and Broad branches
of the Church of England.
In reply to this specious objection, it is maintained in
this Essay that, granting that some large variations of
teaching do in its long course of 1800 years exist, never-
theless, these, on examination, will be found to arise
from the nature of the case, and to proceed on a law,
and with a harmony and a definite drift, and with
Vlll PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
an analogy to Scripture revelations, which, instead of
telling to their disadvantage, actually constitute an argu-
ment in their favour, as witnessing to a superintending
Providence and a great Design in the mode and in the
circumstances of their occurrence.
Perhaps his confidence in the truth and availableness
of this view has sometimes led the author to be careless
and over-liberal in his concessions to Protestants of
historical fact.
If this be so anywhere, he begs the reader in such
cases to understand him as speaking hypothetically, and
in the sense of an aryumentum ad homincm and a fortiori.
Nor is such hypothetical reasoning out of place in a
publication which is addressed, not to theologians, but to
those who as yet are not even Catholics, and who, as they
read history, would scoff at any defence of Catholic doctrine
which did not go the length of covering admissions in
matters of fact as broad as those which are here ventured
on.
In this new Edition of the Essay various important
alterations have been made in the arrangement of its
separate parts, and some, not indeed in its matter, but in
its text.
February 2, 1878.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.
IT is now above eleven years since the writer of the
following pages, in one of the early Numbers of the
Tracts for the Times, expressed himself thus : —
" Considering the high gifts, and the strong claims of the Church
of Rome and her dependencies on our admiration, reverence, love, and
gratitude, how could we withstand her, as we do ; how could we refrain
from being melted into tenderness, and rushing into communion
with her, but for the words of Truth, which bid us prefer Itself to the
whole world ? ' He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is
not worthy of Me.' How could we learn to be severe, and execute
judgment, but for the warning of Moses against even a divinely-gifted
teacher who should preach new gods, and the anathema of St. Paul
even against Angels and Apostles who should bring in a new
doctrine ? " l
He little thought, when he so wrote, that the time
would ever come when he should feel the obstacle, which
he spoke of as lying in the way of communion with the
Church of Home, to be destitute of solid foundation.
The following Work is directed towards its removal.
Having, in former publications, called attention to the
1 Records of the Church, xxiv. p. 7.
X ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.
supposed difficulty, lie considers himself bound to avow
his present belief that it is imaginary.
He has neither the ability to put out of hand a finished
composition, nor the wish to make a powerful and moving
representation, on the great subject of which he treats.
His aim will be answered, if he succeeds in suggesting
thoughts, which in God's good time may quietly bear
fruit, in the minds of those to whom that subject is new;
and which may carry forward inquirers, who have already
put themselves on the course.
If at times his tone appears positive or peremptory,
he hopes this will be imputed to the scientific character
of the Work, which requires a distinct statement of
principles, and of the arguments which recommend them.
He hopes too he shall be excused for his frequent
quotations from himself; which are necessary in order to
show how he stands at present in relation to various of
his former Publications. * * *
LlTTLEMOEE,
October 6, 1845.
POSTSCRIPT.
Since the above was written, the Author has joined
the Catholic Church. It was his intention and wish to
have carried his Volume through the Press before deciding
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION. XI
finally on this step. But when he had got some way in
the printing, he recognized in himself a conviction of the
truth of the conclusion to which the discussion leads, so
clear as to supersede further deliberation. Shortly after-
wards circumstances gave him the opportunity of acting
upon it, and he felt that he had no warrant for refusing
to do so.
His first act on his conversion was to offer his Work for
revision to the proper authorities; but the offer was
declined on the ground that it was written and partly
printed before he was a Catholic, and that it would come
before the reader in a more persuasive form, if he read it
as the author wrote it.
It is scarcely necessary to add that he now submits
every part of the book to the judgment of the Church,
with whose doctrine, on the subjects of which it treats,
he wishes all his thoughts to be coincident.
CONTENTS.
PAET I.
DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS VIEWED IN THEMSELVES.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION . . 3
CHAPTER I.
The Development of Ideas . 33
Section 1. The Process of Development in Ideas ... 33
Section 2. The Kinds of Development in Ideas ... 41
CHAPTEE II.
The Antecedent Argument in behalf of Developments in Christian
Doctrine ......... 55
Section 1. Developments to be expected .... 55
Section 2. An infallible Developing Authority to be expected 75
Section 3. The existing Developments of Doctrine the
probable Fulfilment of that Expectation .... 92
CHAPTER III.
The Historical Argument in behalf of the existing Developments 99
Section 1. Method of Proof . . . . . .99
Section 2. State of the Evidence 110
XIV CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
PAGE
Instances in Illustration 122
Section 1. Instances cursorily noticed .... 123
§ 1. Canon of the New Testament . . . .123
§ 2. Original Sin 126
§ 3. Infant Baptism 127
§ 4. Communion in one kind ..... 129
§ 5. The Homoiision . . . . . . 133
Section 2. Our Lord's Incarnation, and the dignity of His
Mother and of all Saints 135
Section 3. Papal Supremacy 148
PART II.
DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS VIEWED RELATIVELY TO
DOCTRINAL CORRUPTIONS.
CHAPTER V.
Genuine Developments contrasted with Corruptions . . .169
Section 1. First Note of a genuine Development of an Idea :
Preservation of its Type / 171
Section 2. Second Note : Continuity of its Principles . . 178
Section 3. Third Note : Its Power of Assimilation . . 185
Section 4. Fourth Note : Its Logical Sequence . . . 189
Section 5. Fifth Note : Anticipation of its Future . . 195
Section 6. Sixth Note : Conservative Action upon its Past . 199
Section 7. Seventh Note : Its Chronic Vigour . . . 203
CHAPTER VI.
Application of the First Note of a true Development to the
Existing Developments of Christian Doctrine : Preservation of
its Type 207
CONTENTS. XV
PAGE
Section 1. The Church of the First Centuries . . .208
Section 2. The Church of the Fourth Century . . .248
Section 3. The Church of the Fifth and Sixth Centuries . 273
CHAPTER VII.
Application of the Second : Continuity of its Principles . . 323
§ 1. Principles of Christianity 323
§ 2. Supremacy of Faith 326
§ 3. Theology 336
§ 4. Scripture and its Mystical Interpretation . . 338
§ 5. Dogma 346
§ 6. Additional Eemarks 353
CHAPTER VIII.
Application of the Third : its Assimilative Power . . .355
§ 1. Dogmatic Truth 357
§ 2. Sacramental Grace 368
CHAPTER IX.
Application of the Fourth : its Logical Sequence . . . 381
§ 1. Pardons 382
§ 2. Penances . . . * 383
§ 3. Satisfactions 384
§ 4. Purgatory .386
§ 5. Meritorious Works 391
§ 6. The Monastic Rule 393
CHAPTER X.
Application of the Fifth : Anticipation of its Future . . .398
§ 1. Resurrection and Relics . . . . 399
§ 2. The Virgin Life 405
§ 3. Cultus of Saints and Angels . . . .408
§ 4. Office of the Blessed Virgin . . . .413
XVI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
PAGE
Application of the Sixth : Conservative Action on its Past . 417
Section 1. Instances cursorily noticed .... 418
Section 2. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin . . . .423
CHAPTER XII.
Application of the Seventh : its Chronic Vigour . . . 435
CONCLUSION 443
PART I.
DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS
VIEWED IN THEMSELVES.
X
INTRODUCTION.
CHRISTIANITY has been long enough in the world to
justify us in dealing with it as a fact in the world's
history. Its genius and character, its doctrines, precepts,
and objects cannot be treated as matters of private opinion
or deduction, unless we may reasonably so regard the
Spartan institutions or the religion of Mahomet. It may
indeed legitimately be made the subject-matter of theories;
what is its moral and political excellence, what its due
location in the range of ideas or of facts which we possess,
whether it be divine or human, whether original or
eclectic, or both at once, how far favourable to civilization
or to literature, whether a religion for all ages or for a
particular state of society, these are questions upon the
fact, or professed solutions of the fact, and belong to the
province of opinion ; but to a fact do they relate, on an
admitted fact do they turn, which must be ascertained as
other facts, and surely has on the whole been so ascertained,
unless the testimony of so many centuries is to go for
nothing. Christianity is no theory of the study or the
cloister. It has long since passed beyond the letter of
documents and the reasonings of individual minds, and
has become public property. Its " sound has gone out
into all lands," and its " words unto the ends of the
world." It has from the first had an objective existence,
B 2
4 INTRODUCTION.
and has thrown itself upon the great concourse of men.
Its home is in the world ; and to know what it is, we must
seek it in the world, and hear the world's witness of it.
2.
The hypothesis, indeed, has met with wide reception in
these latter times, that Christianity does not fall within the
province of history, — that it is to each man what each man
thinks it to be, and nothing else ; and thus in fact is a
mere name for a cluster or family of rival religions all
together, religions at variance one with another, and
claiming the same appellation, not because there can be
assigned any one and the same doctrine as the common
foundation of all, but because certain points of agreement
may be found here and there of some sort or other, by
which each in its turn is connected with one or another of
the rest. Or again, it has been maintained, or implied,
that all existing denominations of Christianity are wrong,
none representing it as taught by Christ and His Apostles ;
that the original religion has gradually decayed or become
hopelessly corrupt ; nay that it died out of the world at its
birth, and was forthwith succeeded by a counterfeit or
counterfeits which assumed its name, though they inherited
at best but some fragments of its teaching ; or rather that
it cannot even be said either to have decayed or to have died,
because historically it has no substance of its own, but
from the first and onwards it has, on the stage of the
world, been nothing more than a mere assemblage of doc-
trines and practices derived from without, from Oriental,
Platonic, Polytheistic sources, from Buddhism, Essenism,
Manicheeism ; or that, allowing true Christianity still to
exist, it has but a hidden and isolated life, in the hearts of
the elect, or again as a literature or philosophy, not cer-
tified in any way, much less guaranteed, to come from
above, but one out of the various separate informations
INTRODUCTION. 0
about the Supreme Being and human duty, with which an
unknown Providence has furnished us, whether in nature
or in the world.
3.
All such views of Christianity imply that there is no
sufficient body of historical proof to interfere with, or at
least to prevail against, any number whatever of free and
independent hypotheses concerning it. But this surely is
not self-evident, and has itself to be proved. Till positive
reasons grounded on facts are adduced to the contrary, the
most natural hypothesis, the most agreeable to our mode of
proceeding in parallel cases, and that which takes prece-
dence of all others, is to consider that the society of
Christians, which the Apostles left on earth, were of
that religion to which the Apostles had converted them ;
that the external continuity of name, profession, and
communion, argues a real continuity of doctrine ; that, as
Christianity began by manifesting itself as of a certain
shape and bearing to all mankind, therefore it went on so
to manifest itself; and that the more, considering that
prophecy had already determined that it was to be a
power visible in the world and sovereign over it,
characters which are accurately fulfilled in that historical
Christianity to which we commonly give the name. It is
not a violent assumption, then, but rather mere abstinence
from the wanton admission of a principle which would
necessarily lead to the most vexatious and preposterous
scepticism, to take it for granted, before proof to the con-
trary, that the Christianity of the second, fourth, seventh,
twelfth, sixteenth, and intermediate centuries is in its sub-
stance the very religion which Christ and His Apostles
taught in the first, whatever may be the modifications for
good or for evil which lapse of years, or the vicissitudes of
human affairs, have impressed upon it.
6 INTRODUCTION.
Of course I do not deny the abstract possibility of ex-
treme changes. The substitution is certainly, in idea,
\ supposable of a counterfeit Christianity, — superseding the
original, by means of the adroit innovations of seasons,
places, and persons, till, according to the familiar illustra-
tion, the " blade" and the "handle" are alternately
renewed, and identity is lost without the loss of continuity .
It is possible ; but it must not be assumed. The onus pro-
bandit with those who assert what it is unnatural to expect ;
to be just able to doubt is no warrant for disbelieving.
4.
Accordingly, some writers have gone on to give reasons
from history for their refusing to appeal to history. They
aver that, when they come to look into the documents and
literature of Christianity in times past, they find its
doctrines so variously represented, and so inconsistently
maintained by its professors, that, however natural it be
a priori, it is useless, in fact, to seek in history the matter
of that Revelation which has been vouchsafed to mankind ;
that they cannot be historical Christians if they would.
They say, in the words of Chillingworth, " There are
popes against popes, councils against councils, some
fathers against others, the same fathers against themselves,
a consent of fathers of one age against a consent of fathers
of another age, the Church of one age against the Church
of another age :" — Hence they are forced, whether they
will or not, to fall back upon the Bible as the sole source
of Revelation, and upon their own personal private judg-
ment as the sole expounder of its doctrine. This is a fair
argument, if it can be maintained, and it brings me at
once to the subject of this Essay. Not that it enters into
my purpose to convict of misstatement, as might be done,
each separate clause of this sweeping accusation of a smart
but superficial writer ; but neither on the other hand do I
INTRODUCTION. 7
mean to deny everything that he says to the disadvan-
tage of historical Christianity. On the contrary, I shall
admit that there are in fact certain apparent variations in
its teaching, which have to be explained ; thus I shall
begin, but then I shall attempt to explain them to
the exculpation of that teaching in point of unity, direct-
ness, and consistency.
5.
Meanwhile, before setting about this work, I will
address one remark to Chillingworth and his friends : —
Let them consider, that if they can criticize history, the
facts of history certainly can retort upon them. It
might, I grant, be clearer on this great subject than it
is. This is no great concession. History is not a creed
or a catechism, it gives lessons rather than rules ; still no
one can mistake its general teaching in this matter, whether
he accept it or stumble at it. Bold outlines and broad
masses of colour rise-'out of the records of the past. They
may be dim, they may be incomplete ; but they are
definite. And this one thing at least is certain ; whatever
history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates
or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the
Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there
were a safe truth, it is this.
And Protestantism has ever felt it so. I do not
mean that every writer on the Protestant side has felt it ;
for it was the fashion at first, at least as a rhetorical argu-
ment against Home, to appeal to past ages, or to some of
them ; but Protestantism, as a whole, feels it, and has felt
it. This is shown in the determination already referred
to, of dispensing with historical Christianity altogether,
and of forming a Christianity from the Bible alone : men
never would have put it aside, unless they had despaired
of it. It is shown by the long neglect of ecclesiastical
8 INTRODUCTION.
history in England, which prevails even in the English
Church. Our popular religion scarcely recognizes the
fact of the twelve long ages which lie between the Coun-
cils of Nicsea and Trent, except as affording one or two
passages to illustrate its wild interpretations of certain
prophecies of St. Paul and St. John. It is melancholy to
say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who
has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian,
is the unbeliever Gibbon. To be deep in history is to
cease to be a Protestant.
6.
And this utter incongruity between Protestantism and
historical Christianity is a plain fact, whether the latter
be regarded in its earlier or in its later centuries. Pro-
testants can as little bear its Ante-nicene as its Post-tri-
dentine period. I have elsewhere observed on this cir-
cumstance : " So much must the Protestant grant that, if
such a system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever
existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if
by a deluge, suddenly, silently, and without memorial ;
by a deluge coming in a night, and utterly soaking, rot-
ting, heaving up, and hurrying off every vestige of what
it found in the Church, before cock-crowing : so that
' when they rose in the morning ' her true seed ' were all
dead corpses ' — nay dead and buried — and without grave-
stone. ' The waters went over them ; there was not one
of them left ; they sunk like lead in the mighty waters/
Strange antitype, indeed, to the early fortunes of Israel !
— then the enemy was drowned, and * Israel saw them
dead upon the sea-shore.' But now, it would seem, water
proceeded as a flood ' out of the serpent's mouth/ and
covered all the witnesses, so that not even their dead
bodies 'lay in the streets of the great city.' Let him
take which of his doctrines he will, his peculiar view of
INTRODUCTION. 9
self-righteousness, of formality, of superstition ; his notion
of faith, or of spirituality in religious worship ; his denial
of the virtue of the sacraments, or of the ministerial com-
mission, or of the visible Church ; or his doctrine of the
divine efficacy of the Scriptures as the one appointed
instrument of religious teaching; and let him consider
how far Antiquity, as it has come down to us, will counte-
nance him in it. No ; he must allow that the alleged
deluge has done its work; yes, and has in turn disap-
peared itself; it has been swallowed up by the earth,
mercilessly as itself was merciless." 1
That Protestantism, then, is not the Christianity of
history, it is easy to determine, but to retort is a poor reply
in controversy to a question of fact, and whatever be the
violence or the exaggeration of writers like Chilling-
worth, if they have raised a real difficulty, it may claim a
real answer, and we must determine whether on the one
hand Christianity is still to represent to us a definite teach-
ing from above, or whether on the other its utterances have
been from time to time so strangely at variance, that we
are necessarily thrown back on our own judgment indi-
vidually to determine, what the revelation of God is, or
rather if in fact there is, or has been, any revelation at all.
7
Here then I concede to the opponents of historical
Christianity, that there are to be found, during the 1800
years through which it has lasted, certain apparent incon-
sistencies and alterations in its doctrine and its worship,
such as irresistibly attract the attention of all who inquire
into it. They are not sufficient to interfere with the
general character and course of the religion, but they raise
the question how they came about, and what they mean,
1 Church of the Fathers [Hist. Sketches, vol. i. p. 418].
10 INTRODUCTION.
and have in consequence supplied matter for several
hypotheses.
One of these is to the effect that Christianity has even
changed from the first and ever accommodates itself to the
circumstances of times and seasons ; but it is difficult to
understand how such a view is compatible with the special
idea of revealed truth, and in fact its advocates more or
less abandon, or tend to abandon the supernatural claims
of Christianity ; so it need not detain us here.
A second and more plausible hypothesis is that of the
Anglican divines, who reconcile and bring into shape the
exuberant phenomena under consideration, by cutting off
and casting away as corruptions all usages, ways, opinions,
and tenets, which have not the sanction of primitive
times. They maintain that history first presents to us a
pure Christianity in East and West, and then a corrupt ;
and then of course their duty is to draw the line between
what is corrupt and what is pure, and to determine the
dates at which the various changes from good to bad were
introduced. Such a principle of demarcation, available
for the purpose, they consider they have found in the
dictum of Vincent of Lerins, that revealed and Apostolic
doctrine is " quod semper, quod ubique. quod ab omnibus,"
a principle infallibly separating, on the whole field of his-
tory, authoritative doctrine from opinion, rejecting what
is faulty, and combining and forming a theology. That
" Christianity is what has been held always, everywhere,
and by all/' certainly promises a solution of the perplexi-
ties, an interpretation of the meaning, of history. "What
can be more natural than that divines and bodies of men
should speak, sometimes from themselves, sometimes from
tradition ? what more natural than that individually they
should say many things on impulse, or under excitement, or
as conjectures, or in ignorance ? what more certain than
that they must all have been instructed and catechized in the
INTRODUCTION. 11
Creed of the Apostles ? what more evident than that what
was their own would in its degree be peculiar, and differ
from what was similarly private and personal in their
brethren ? what more conclusive than that the doctrine
that was common to all at once was not really their own,
but public propert^y in which they had a joint interest,
and was proved by the concurrence of so many witnesses to
have come from an Apostolical source ? Here, then, we
have a short and easy method for bringing the various
informations of ecclesiastical history under that antece-
dent probability in its favour, which nothing but its actual
variations would lead us to neglect. Here we have a
precise and satisfactory reason why we should make
much of the earlier centuries, yet pay no regard to the
later, why we should admit some doctrines and not others,
why we refuse the Creed of Pius IY. and accept the Thirty-
nine Articles.
Such is the rule of historical interpretation which has
been professed in the English school of divines ; and it
contains a majestic truth, and offers an intelligible prin-
ciple, and wears a reasonable air. It is congenial, or, as
it may be said, native to the Anglican mind, which takes
up a middle position, neither discarding the Fathers nor
acknowledging the Pope. It lays down a simple rule by
which to measure the value of every historical fact, as it
comes, and thereby it provides a bulwark against Rome,
while it opens an assault upon Protestantism. Such is its
promise ; but its difficulty lies in applying it in particular
cases. The rule is more serviceable in determining what
is not, than what is Christianity ; it is irresistible against
Protestantism, and in one sense indeed it is irresistible
against Home also, but in the same sense it is irresistible
against England. It strikes at Home through England.
It admits of being interpreted in one of two ways : if
it be narrowed for the purpose of disproving the catho-
12 INTRODUCTION.
licity of the Creed of Pope Pius, it becomes also an objec-
tion to the Athanasian ; and if it be relaxed to admit the
doctrines retained by the English Church, it no longer
excludes certain doctrines of Rome which that Church
denies. It cannot at once condemn St. Thomas and St.
Bernard, and defend St. Athanasius and St. Gregory
Nazianzen.
This general defect in its serviceableness has been here-
tofore felt by those who appealed to it. It was said by
one writer ; " The Rule of Vincent is not of a mathematical
or demonstrative character, but moral, and requires
practical judgment and good sense to apply it. For
instance, what is meant by being ' taught always ? ' does
it mean in every century, or every year, or every month ?
Does ' everywhere ' mean in every country, or in every
diocese ? and does ' the Consent of Fathers ' require us to
produce the direct testimony of every one of them ? How
many Fathers, how many places, how many instances, con-
stitute a fulfilment of the test proposed ? It is, then,
from the nature of the case, a condition which never can
be satisfied as fully as it might have been. It admits of
various and unequal application in various instances ;
and what degree of application is enough, must be decided
by the same principles which guide us in the conduct of
life, which determine us in politics, or trade, or war, which
lead us to accept Revelation at all, (for which we have but
probability to show at most,) nay, to believe in the existence
of an intelligent Creator." 2
9.
So much was allowed by this writer; but then he
added : —
" This character, indeed, of Vincent's Canon, will but
recommend it to the disciples of the school of Butler, from
2 Proph. Office [Via Media, vol. i. pp. 55, 56].
INTRODUCTION. 13
its agreement with the analogy of nature ; but it affords a
ready loophole for such as do not wish to be persuaded, of
which both Protestants and Romanists are not slow to
avail themselves."
This surely is the language of disputants who are more
intent on assailing others then defending themselves ; as
if similar loopholes were not necessary for Anglican
theology.
He elsewhere says: ''What there is not the shadow of
a reason for saying that the Fathers held, what has not
the faintest pretensions of being a Catholic truth, is this,
that St. Peter or his successors were and are universal
Bishops, that they have the whole of Christendom for their
one diocese in a way in which other Apostles and Bishops
had and have not." : Most true, if, in order that a doctrine
be considered Catholic, it must be formally stated by the
Fathers generally from the very first ; but, on the same
understanding, the doctrine also of the apostolical succes-
sion in the episcopal order " has not the faintest pretensions
of being a Catholic truth."
Nor was this writer without a feeling of the special
difficulty of his school ; and he attempted to meet it by
denying it. He wished to maintain that the sacred
doctrines admitted by the Church of England into her
Articles were taught in primitive times with a distinctness
which no one could fancy to attach to the characteristic
tenets of Rome.
" We confidently affirm," he said in another publication,
" that there is not an article in the Athanasian Creed con-
cerning the Incarnation which is not anticipated in the
controversy with the Gnostics. There is no question which
the Apollinarian or the Nestorian heresy raised which
may not be decided in the words of Irenaeus and Tertul-
lian." 4
3 Ibid. p. 181. 4 British Critic, July, 1836, p. 193.
14 INTRODUCTION.
10.
This may be considered as true. It may be true also, or
at least shall here be granted as true, that there is also
a consensus in the Ante-nieene Church for the doctrines of
our Lord's Consubstantiality arid Coeternity with the
Almighty Father. Let us allow that the whole circle of
doctrines, of which our Lord is the subject, was consistently
and uniformly confessed by the Primitive Church, though
not ratified formally in Council. But it surely is otherwise
with the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. I do not see in
what sense it can be said that there is a consensus of primi-
tive divines in its favour, which will not avail also for
certain doctrines of the Roman Church which will presently
come into mention. And this is a point which the writer
of the above passages ought to have more distinctly brought
before his mind and more carefully weighed ; but he seems
to have fancied that Bishop Bull proved the primitiveness
of the Catholic doctrine concerning the Holy Trinity as
well as concerning our Lord.
Now it should be clearly understood what it is which
must be shown by those who would prove it. Of course
the doctrine of our Lord's divinity itself partly implies and
partly recommends the doctrine of the Trinity ; but impli-
cation and suggestion belong to another class of arguments
which has not yet come into consideration. Moreover the
statements of a particular father or doctor may certainly
be of a most important character ; but one divine is not
equal to a Catena. We must have a whole doctrine stated
by a whole Church. The Catholic Truth in question is
made up of a number of separate propositions, each of
which, if maintained to the exclusion of the rest, is a
heresy. In order then to prove that all the Ante-nicene
writers taught the dogma of the Holy Trinity, it is not
enough to prove that each has gone far enough to be a
INTRODUCTION. 15
heretic — not enough to prove that one has held that the
Son is God, (for so did the Sabellian, so did the Macedo-
nian), and another that the Father is not the Son, (for so
did the Arian), and another that the Son is equal to the
Father, (for so did the Tritheist), and another that there
is but One God, (for so did the Unitarian), — not enough
that many attached in some sense a Threefold Power to
the idea of the Almighty, (for so did almost all the heresies
that ever existed, and could not but do so, if they accepted
the New Testament at all) ; but we must show that all
these statements at once, and others too, are laid down by
as many separate testimonies as may fairly be taken to
constitute a " consensus of doctors." It is true indeed that
the subsequent profession of the doctrine in the Universal
Church creates a presumption that it was held even before
it was professed ; and it is fair to interpret the early
Fathers by the later. This is true, and admits of applica-
tion to certain other doctrines besides that of the Blessed
Trinity in Unity ; but there is as little room for such
antecedent probabilities as for the argument from sugges-
tions and intimations in the precise and imperative Quod
semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, as it is commonly
understood by English divines, and is by them used
against the later Church and the see of Rome. What we
have a right to ask, if we are bound to act upon Vincent's
rule in regard to the Trinitarian dogma, is a sufficient
number of Ante-nicene statements, each distinctly antici-
pating the Athanasian Creed.
11.
Now let us look at the leading facts of the case, in
appealing to which I must not be supposed to be ascribing
any heresy to the holy men whose words have not always
been sufficiently full or exact to preclude the imputation.
First, the Creeds of that early day make no mention in
16 INTRODUCTION.
their letter of the Catholic doctrine at all. They make
mention indeed of a Three ; but that there is any mystery in
the doctrine, that the Three are One, that They are coequal,
coeternal, all increate, all omnipotent, all incomprehensible,
is not stated, and never could be gathered from them. Of
course we believe that they imply it, or rather intend it.
God forbid we should do otherwise ! But nothing in the
mere letter of those documents leads to that belief. To
give a deeper meaning to their letter, we must interpret
them by the times which came after.
Again, there is one and one only great doctrinal Council
in Ante-nicene times. It was held at Antioch, in the
middle of the third century, on occasion of the incipient
innovations of the Syrian heretical school. Now the
Fathers there assembled, for whatever reason, condemned,
or at least withdrew, when it came into the dispute, the
word " Homousion," which was afterwards received at
Nicaea as the special symbol of Catholicism against
Arius.5
Again, the six great Bishops and Saints of the Ante-
nicene Church were St. Irenseus, St. Hippolytus, St.
Cyprian, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St. Dionysius of
Alexandria, and St. Methodius. Of these, St. Dionysius is
accused by St. Basil of having sown the first seeds of
Arianism ;6 and St. Gregory is allowed by the same learned
Father to have used language concerning our Lord, which
he onljT defends on the plea of an economical object in the
writer.7 St. Hippolytus speaks as if he were ignorant of
5 This of course has been disputed, as is the case with almost all facts
which bear upon the decision of controversies. I shall not think it necessary
to notice the possibility or the fact of objections on questions upon which
the world may now be said to be agreed j e. g. the arianizing tone of
Eusebius.
6 <TX^V Tccimjo-l TTJS vvv 7repify>uAA.ot//ie'j/7js ci(rej8eias, TTJS Kara, rb 'Av6-
/JLOIOV \4y<a, OVTOS ^ffrlv, flffa ye rjfj.e'is iff^v, & irpuros avOpcairois TO
Ep. ix. 2. " Bull, Defens. F. X. ii. 12, § 6.
INTRODUCTION. 17
our Lord's Eternal Sonship ;8 St. Methodius speaks
incorrectly at least upon the Incarnation ;9 and St. Cyprian
does not treat of theology at all. Such is the incomplete-
ness of the extant teaching of these true saints, and,
in their day, faithful witnesses of the Eternal Son.
Again, Athenagoras, St. Clement, Tertullian, and the
two SS. Dionysii would appear to be the only writers
whose language is at any time exact and systematic enough
to remind us of the Athanasian Creed. If we limit our
view of the teaching of the Fathers by what they
expressly state, St. Ignatius may be considered as a Patri-
passian, St. Justin arianizes, and St. Hippolytus is a
Photinian.
Again, there are three great theological authors of
the Ante-nicene centuries, Tertullian, Origen, and, we
may add, Eusebius, though he lived some way into the
fourth. Tertullian is heterodox on the doctrine of our
Lord's divinity,1 and, indeed, ultimately fell altogether
into heresy or schism; Origen is, at the very least,
suspected, and must be defended and explained rather than
cited as a witness of orthodoxy ; and Eusebius was a Semi-
Arian.
12.
Moreover, it may be questioned whether any Ante-
3 " The authors who make the generation temporary, and speak not ex-
pressly of any other, are these following: Justin, Athenagoras, Theophilus,
Tatian, Tertullian, and Hippolytus/' — Waterland, vol. i. part 2, p. 104.
9 " Levia sunt," says Maran in his defence, " quse in Sanctissimam Trini-
tatem hie liber peccare dicitur, paulo graviora quae in mysterium Incarna-
tionis."— Div. Jes. Christ, p. 527. Shortly after, p. 530, " In tertia oratione
nonnulla legimus Incarnationem Domini spectantia, qua? subabsurde dicta
fateor, nego impie cogitata."
1 Bishop Bull, who is tender towards him, allows, " Ut quod res est dicam,
cum Valentinianis hie et reliquo gnosticorum grege aliquatenus locutus est
Tertullianus ; in re ipsa tamen cum Catholicis omnind sensit." — Defens.
F. N. iii. 10, § 15.
C
18 INTRODUCTION.
nicene father distinctly affirms either the numerical Unity
or the Coequality of the Three Persons ; except perhaps the
heterodox Tertullian, and that chiefly in a work written
after he had become a Montanist :2 yet to satisfy the Anti-
roman use of Quod semper, fyc., surely we ought not to be
left for these great articles of doctrine to the testimony of
a later age.
Further, Bishop Bull allows that " nearly all the ancient
Catholics who preceded Arius have the appearance of being
ignorant of the in visible and incomprehensible (immensani)
nature of the Son of God ;" 3 an article expressly taught in
the Athanasian Creed under the sanction of its. anathema.
It must be asked, moreover, how much direct and
literal testimony the Ante-nicene Fathers give, one by one,
to the divinity of the Holy Spirit ? This alone shall be
observed, that St. Basil, in the fourth century, finding
that, if he distinctly called the Third Person in the
Blessed Trinity by the Name of God, he should be put out
of the Church by the Arians, pointedly refrained from
doing so on an occasion on which his enemies were on the
watch ; and that, when some Catholics found fault with
him, St. Athanasius took his part.4 Could this possibly
have been the conduct of any true Christian, not to say
Saint, of a later age ? that is, whatever be the true account
of it, does it not suggest to us that the testimony of those
early times lies very unfavourably for the application of
the rule of Vincentius ?
13.
Let it not be for a moment supposed that I impugn the
orthodoxy of the early divines, or the cogency of their
testimony among fair inquirers ; but I am trying them by
2 Adv. Praxeani. 3 Defens. F. N. iv. 3, § 1.
4 Basil, ed. Ben. vol. 3, p. xcvi.
INTRODUCTION. 19
that unfair interpretation of Yincentius, which is necessary
in order to make him available against the Church of
Rome. And now, as to the positive evidence which those
Fathers offer in behalf of the Catholic doctrine of the
Trinity, it has been drawn out by Dr. Burton, and seems
to fall under two heads. One is the general ascription of
glory to the Three Persons together, both by fathers and
churches, and that on continuous tradition and from the
earliest times. Under the second fall certain distinct
statements of particular fathers ; thus we find the word
"Trinity" used by St. Theophilus, St. Clement, St.
Hippolytus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Origen, St. Methodius;
and the Divine Circumincessio, the most distinctive portion
of the Catholic doctrine, and the unity of power, or again,
of substance, are declared with more or less distinctness
by Athenagoras, St. Irenaeus, St. Clement, Tertullian,
St. Hippolytus, Origen, and the two SS. Dionysii. This
is pretty much the whole of the evidence.
14.
Perhaps it will be said we ought to take the Ante-nicene
Fathers as a whole, and interpret one of them by another.
This is to assume that they are all of one school, which of
course they are, but which in controversy is a point to be
proved ; but it is even doubtful whether, on the whole,
such a procedure would strengthen the argument. For
instance, as to the second head of the positive evidence
noted by Dr. Burton, Tertullian is the most formal and
elaborate of these Fathers in his statements of the Catholic
doctrine. " It would hardly be possible/' says Dr. Burton,
after quoting a passage, " for Athanasius himself, or the
compiler of the Athanasian Creed, to have delivered the
doctrine of the Trinity in stronger terms than these." 5
Yet Tertullian must be considered heterodox on the
5 Ante-nicene Test, to the Trinity, p. 69.
c 2
20 INTRODUCTION.
doctrine of our Lord's eternal generation.6 If then we
are to argue from his instance to that of the other Fathers,
we shall be driven to the conclusion that even the most
exact statements are worth nothing more than their letter,
are a warrant for nothing beyond themselves, and are
consistent with heterodoxy where they do not expressly
protest against it.
And again, as to the argument derivable from the
Doxologies, it must not be forgotten that one of the
passages in St. Justin Martyr includes the worship of the
Angels. " We worship and adore," he says, " Him, and
the Son who came from Him and taught us these things,
and the host of those other good Angels, who follow and
are like Him, and the Prophetic Spirit/' : A Unitarian
might argue from this passage that the glory and worship
which the early Church ascribed to our Lord was not
more definite than that which St. Justin was ready to
concede to creatures.
15.
Thus much on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Let
us proceed to another example. There are two doctrines
which are generally associated with the name of a Father
of the fourth and fifth centuries, and which can allege little
definite, or at least about the same, testimony in their
behalf before his time, — Purgatory and Original Sin. The
dictum of Yincent admits both or excludes both, according
as it is or is not rigidly taken ; but, if used as what Aris-
totle calls the " Lesbian Rule," then of course it can be
made to admit Original Sin and exclude Purgatory.
6 " Quia et Pater Deus est, et judex Deus est, non tamen ideo Pater et
judex semper, quia Deus semper. Nam nee Pater potuit esse ante Filium, nee
judex ante delictum. Fuit autem tempus, cum et delictum et Filius non
fuit, quod judicem, et qui Patrem Dominum faceret." — Contr. Herm. 3.
7 Vid. infra, towards the end of the Essay, ch. x., where more will be said
on the passage.
INTRODUCTION. 21
On the one hand, the notion of suffering, or disadvantage,
or punishment after this life, in the case of the faithful
departed, or other vague forms of the doctrine of Purgatory,
has in its favour almost a consensus of the four first ages of
the Church, though some Fathers state it with far greater
openness and decision than others. It is, as far as words
go, the confession of St. Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian,
St. Perpetua, St. Cyprian, Origen, Lactantius, St. Hilary,
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Ambrose, St. Basil, St. Gregory
of Nazianzus, and of Nyssa, St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome,
St. Paulinus, and St. Augustine. And, on the other hand,
there is an agreement of Fathers from the first that
mankind has derived some disadvantage from the sin of
Adam.
16.
Next, when we consider the two doctrines more dis-
tinctly,— the doctrine that between death and judgment
there is a time or state of punishment ; and the doctrine
that all men, naturally propagated from fallen Adam, are
in consequence born destitute of original righteousness, —
we find, on the one hand, several, such as Tertullian,
St. Perpetua, St. Cyril, St. Hilary, St. Jerome, St. Gregory
Nyssen, as far as their words go, definitely declaring a
doctrine of Purgatory : whereas no one will say that there
is a testimony of the Fathers, equally strong, for the doctrine
of Original Sin, though it is difficult here to make any
definite statement about their teaching without going into
a discussion of the subject.
On the subject of Purgatory there were, to speak
•generally, two schools of opinion ; the Greek, which con-
templated a trial of fire at the last day through which all
were to pass ; and the African, resembling more nearly the
present doctrine of the Roman Church. And so there
were two principal views of Original Sin, the Greek and
22 INTRODUCTION.
the African or Latin. Of the Greek, the judgment of
Hooker is well known, though it must not be taken in the
letter : " The heresy of freewill was a millstone about those
Pelagians' neck ; shall we therefore give sentence of death
inevitable against all those Fathers in the Greek Church
which, being mispersuaded, died in the error of freewill?"8
Bishop Taylor, arguing for an opposite doctrine, bears a like
testimony : " Original Sin," he says, " as it is at this day
commonly explicated, was not the doctrine of the primitive
Church ; but when Pelagius had puddled the stream,
St. Austin was so angry that he stamped and disturbed it
more. And truly . . I do not think that the gentlemen
that urged against me St. Austin's opinion do well consider
that I profess myself to follow those Fathers who were
before him ; and whom St. Austin did forsake, as I do him,
in the question."9 The same is asserted or allowed by
Jansenius, Petavius, and Walch,1 men of such different
schools that we may surely take their agreement as a proof
of the fact. A late writer, after going through the
testimonies of the Fathers one by one, comes to the
conclusion, first, that " the Greek Church in no point
favoured Augustine, except in teaching that from Adam's
sin came death, and, (after the time of Methodius,) an
extraordinary and unnatural sensuality also ; " next, that
" the Latin Church affirmed, in addition, that a corrupt
and contaminated soul, and that, by generation, was
carried on to his posterity ;" 2 and, lastly, that neither
8 Of Justification, 26. 9 Works, vol. ix. p. 396.
1 "Quamvis igitur quam maxime fallantur Pelagian!, quum asserant,
peccatura originale ex Augustini profluxisse ingenio, antiquam vero ecclesiam
illud plane nescivisse; diffiteri tamen nemo potest, apud Grsecos patres
imprimis inveniri loca, quse Pelagianismo favere videntur. Hinc et C. Jan-
senius, ' Grseci,' inquit, ' nisi caute legantur et intelligantur, prsebere possunt
occasionem errori Pelagiano ;' et D. Petavius dicit, * Grseci originalis fere
criminis raram,nec disertam mentionem scriptis suis attigerunt.' " — Walch.
Miscell. Sacr. p. 607.
2 Horn, Comment, de Pecc. Grig. 1801, p. 98.
INTRODUCTION. 23
Greeks nor Latins held the doctrine of imputation.
It may be observed, in addition, that, in spite of the
forcible teaching of St. Paul on the subject, the doctrine
of Original Sin appears neither in the Apostles' nor the
Mcene Creed.
17.
One additional specimen shall be given as a sample of
many others : — I betake myself to one of our altars to
receive the Blessed Eucharist ; I have no doubt whatever
on my mind about the Gift which that Sacrament contains ;
I confess to myself my belief, and I go through the steps
on which it is assured to me. " The Presence of Christ is
here, for It follows upon Consecration ; and Consecration
is the prerogative of Priests ; and Priests are made by
Ordination ; and Ordination comes in direct line from the
Apostles. Whatever be our other misfortunes, every link
in our chain is safe ; we have the Apostolic Succession, we
have a right form of consecration: therefore we are blessed
with the great Gift." Here the question rises in me,
"Who told you about that Gift?" I answer, "I have
learned it from the Fathers : I believe the Real Presence
because they bear witness to it. St. Ignatius calls it ' the
medicine of immortality :' St. Irenseus says that ' our flesh
becomes incorrupt, and partakes of life, and has the hope
of the resurrection,' as ' being nourished from the Lord's
Body and Blood ;' that the Eucharist ' is made up of two
things, an earthly and an heavenly :'3 perhaps Origenand
perhaps Magnes, after him, say that It is not a type of our
Lord's Body, but His Body: and St. Cyprian uses language
as fearful as can be spoken, of those who profane it. I
cast my lot with them, I believe as they." Thus I reply,
and then the thought comes upon me a second time, "And
do not the same ancient Fathers bear witness to another
3 Haer. iv. 18, § 5.
24 INTRODUCTION.
doctrine, which you disown ? Are you not as a hypocrite,
listening1 to them when you will, and deaf when you will
not ? How are you casting your lot with the Saints, when
you go but half-way with them ? For of whether of the
two do they speak the more frequently, of the Real
Presence in the Eucharist, or of the Pope's supremacy ?
You accept the lesser evidence, you reject the greater."
18.
In truth, scanty as the Ante-nicene notices may be of
the Papal Supremacy, they are both more numerous and
more definite than the adducible testimonies in favour of
the Real Presence. The testimonies to the latter are
confined to a few passages such as those just quoted. On
the other hand, of a passage in St. Justin, Bishop Kaye
remarks, " Le Nourry infers that Justin maintained the
doctrine of Transubstantiation ; it might in my opinion be
more plausibly urged in favour of Consubstantiation, since
Justin calls the consecrated elements Bread and Wine,
though not common bread and wine.4 . . . We may there-
fore conclude that, when he calls them the Body and Blood
of Christ, he speaks figuratively." " Clement," observes
the same author, "says that the Scripture calls wine a
mystic symbol of the holy blood. . . . Clement gives various
interpretations of Christ's expressions in John vi. respect-
ing His flesh and blood ; but in no instance does he
interpret them literally His notion seems to have
been that, by partaking of the bread and wine in the
Eucharist, the soul of the believer is united to the Spirit,
and that by this union the principle of immortality is im-
parted to the flesh."5 "It has been suggested by some,"
says Waterland, " that Tertullian understood John vi.
merely of faith, or doctrine, or spiritual actions ; and it is
strenuously denied by others." After quoting the passage,
4 Justin Martyr, ch. 4. 5 Clein. Alex. ch. 11.
INTRODUCTION. 25
he adds, " All that one can justly gather from this confused
passage is that Tertullian interpreted the bread of life in
John vi. of the Word, which he sometimes makes to be
vocal, and sometimes substantial, blending the ideas in a
very perplexed manner ; so that he is no clear authority
for construing John vi. of doctrines, &c. All that is cer-
tain is that he supposes the Word made flesh, the Word
incarnate to be the heavenly bread spoken of in that chap-
ter."6 " Origen's general observation relating to that
chapter is, that it must not be literally, but figuratively
understood."7 Again, " It is plain enough that Eusebius
followed Origen in this matter, and that both of them
favoured the same mystical or allegorical construction ;
whether constantly and uniformly I need not say." !l I will
but add the incidental testimony afforded on a late occa-
sion : — how far the Anglican doctrine of the Eucharist
depends on the times before the Nicene Council, how far
on the times after it, may be gathered from the circum-
stance that, when a memorable Sermon 9 was published on
the subject, out of about one hundred and forty passages
from the Fathers appended in the notes, not in formal
proof, but in general illustration, only fifteen were taken
from Ante-nicene writers.
With such evidence, the Ante-nicene testimonies which
may be cited in behalf of the authority of the Holy See,
need not fear a comparison. Faint they may be one by
one, but at least we may count seventeen of them, and they
are various, and are drawn from many times and countries,
and thereby serve to illustrate each other, and form a body
of proof. Whatever objections may be made to this or
that particular, fact, and I do not think any valid ones can
be raised, still, on the whole, I consider that a cumulative
argument rises from them in favour of the ecumenical and
6 Works, vol. vii. p. 118-120. 1 Ibid. p. 121.
8 Ibid. p. 127. 9 [Dr. Pusey's University Sermon of 1843.]
26 INTRODUCTION.
the doctrinal authority of Rome, stronger than any
argument which can be drawn from the same period for
the doctrine of the Real Presence. I shall have occasion
to enumerate them in the fourth chapter of this Essay.
19.
If it be said that the Real Presence appears, by the
Liturgies of the fourth or fifth century, to have been the
doctrine of the earlier, since those very forms probably
existed from the first in Divine worship, this is doubtless
an important truth ; but then it is true also that the writers
of the fourth and fifth centuries fearlessly assert, or frankly
allow, that the prerogatives of Rome were derived from
apostolic times, and that because it was the See of St. Peter.
Moreover, if the resistance of St. Cyprian and Firmilian
to the Church of Rome, in the question of baptism by
heretics, be urged as an argument against her primitive
authority, or the earlier resistance of Poly crates of Ephesus,
let it be considered, first, whether all authority does not
necessarily lead to resistance ; next, whether St. Cyprian's
own doctrine, which is in favour of Rome, is not more
weighty than his act, which is against her ; thirdly, whether
he was not already in error in the main question under
discussion, and Firmilian also ; and lastly, which is the
chief point here, whether, in like manner, we may not object
on the other hand against the Real Presence the words of
Tertullian, who explains, " This is my Body," by " a figure
of my Body/' and of Origen, who speaks of " our drinking
Christ's Blood not only in the rite of the Sacraments, but
also when we receive His discourses," l and says that ' ' that
Bread which God the Word acknowledges as His Body is
the Word which nourishes souls," 2 — passages which admit
of a Catholic interpretation when the Catholic doctrine is
1 Numer. Horn. xvi. 9. " Interp. Com. in Matt. 85.
INTRODUCTION. 27
once proved, but which primd facie run counter to that
doctrine.
It does not seem possible, then, to avoid the conclusion
that, whatever be the proper key for harmonizing the
records and documents of the early and later Church, and
true as the dictum of Yincentius must be considered in
the abstract, and possible as its application might be in his
own age, when he might almost ask the primitive centuries
for their testimony, it is hardly available now, or effective
of any satisfactory result. The solution it offers is as
difficult as the original problem.
20.
Another hypothesis for accounting for a want of accord
between the early and the late aspects of Christianity is
that of the Disciplina Arcani, put forward on the assump-
tion that there has been no variation in the teaching of
the Church from first to last. It is maintained that
doctrines which are associated with the later ages of the
Church were really in the Church from the first, but not
publicly taught, and that for various reasons : as, for the
sake of reverence, that sacred subjects might not be pro-
faned by the heathen ; and for the sake of catechumens,
that they might not be oppressed or carried away by a
sudden communication of the whole circle of revealed
truth. And indeed the fact of this concealment can hardly
be denied, in whatever degree it took the shape of a defi-
nite rule, which might vary with persons and places.
That it existed even as a rule, as regards the Sacraments,
seems to be confessed on all hands. That it existed in
other respects, as a practice, is plain from the nature of the
case, and from the writings of the Apologists. Minucius
Felix and Arnobius, in controversy with Pagans, imply a
denial that then the Christians used altars ; yet Tertullian
speaks expressly of the Am Dei in the Church. What
28 INTRODUCTION.
can we say, but that the Apologists deny altars in the
sense in which they ridicule them. ; or, that they deny
that altars such as the Pagan altars were tolerated by
Christians ? And, in like manner, Minucius allows that
there were no temples among Christians ; yet they are
distinctly recognized in the edicts of the Dioclesian era,
and are known to have existed at a still earlier date. It
is the tendency of every dominant system, such as the
Paganism of the Ante-nicene centuries, to force its oppo-
nents into the most hostile and jealous attitude, from the
apprehension which they naturally feel, lest, if they acted
otherwise, in those points in which they approximate to-
wards it, they should be misinterpreted and overborne by
its authority. The very fault now found with clergymen
of the English Church, who wish to conform their prac-
tices to her rubrics, and their doctrines to her divines of
the seventeenth century, is, that, whether they mean it or
no, whether legitimately or no, still, in matter of fact, they
will be sanctioning and encouraging the religion of Rome,
in which there are similar doctrines and practices, more
definite and more influential ; so that, at any rate, it is
inexpedient at the moment to attempt what is sure to be
mistaken. That is, they are required to exercise a disci-
plina arcani ; and a similar reserve was inevitable on the
part of the Catholic Church, at a time when priests and
altars and rites all around it were devoted to malignant
and incurable superstitions. It would be wrong indeed to
deny, but it was a duty to withhold, the ceremonial of
Christianity ; and Apologists might be sometimes tempted
to deny absolutely what at furthest could only be denied
under conditions. An idolatrous Paganism tended to re-
press the externals of Christianity, as, at this day, the
presence of Protestantism is said to repress, though for
another reason, the exhibition of the Roman Catholic re-
ligion.
INTRODUCTION. 29
On various grounds, then, it is certain that portions of
the Church system were held back in primitive times,
and of course this fact goes some way to account for that
apparent variation and growth of doctrine which embar-
rasses us when we would consult history for the true idea
of Christianity ; yet it is no key to the whole difficulty,
as we find it, for obvious reasons ; — because the varia-
tions continue beyond the time when it is conceivable
that the discipline was in force, and because they manifest
themselves on a law, not abruptly, but by a growth
which has persevered up to this time without any sign
of its coming to an end.3
21.
The following Essay is directed towards a solution of the
difficulty which has been stated, — the difficulty, as far as
it exists, which lies in the way of our using in controversy
the testimony of our most natural informant concerning
the doctrine and worship of Christianity, viz. the history of
eighteen hundred years. The view on which it is written
has at all times, perhaps, been implicitly adopted by theo-
logians, and, I believe, has recently been illustrated by
several distinguished writers of the continent, such as De
Maistre and Mohler : viz. that the increase and expansion of
the Christian Creed and Ritual, and the variations which
have attended the process in the case of individual writers
and Churches, are the necessary attendants on any
philosophy or polity which takes possession of the intellect
and heart and has had any wide or extended dominion ;
that, from the nature of the human mind, time is necessary
for the full comprehension and perfection of great ideas ;
and that the highest and most wonderful truths, though
3 {Vid. Apolog., p. 198, and Difficulties of Angl. vol. i. xii. 7.]
30 INTRODUCTION.
communicated to the world once for all by inspired
teachers, could not be comprehended all at once by the
recipients, but, as being received and transmitted by minds
not inspired and through media which were human, have
required only the longer time and deeper thought for
their full elucidation. This may be called the Theory of
Development of Doctrine ; and, before proceeding to treat
of it, one remark may be in place.
It is undoubtedly an hypothesis to account for a diffi-
culty ; but such too are the various explanations given by
astronomers from Ptolemy to Newton of the apparent
motions of the heavenly bodies, and it is as unphilosophical
on that account to object to the one as to object to the
other. Nor is it more reasonable to express surprise, that
at this time of day a theory is necessary, granting for
argument's sake that the theory is novel, than to have
directed a similar wonder in disparagement of the theory
of gravitation, or the Plutonian theory in geology. Doubt-
less, the theory of the Secret and the theory of doctrinal
Developments are expedients, and so is the dictum of Vin-
centius ; so is the art of grammar or the use of the quad-
rant ; it is an expedient to enable us to solve what has
now become a necessary and an anxious problem. For
three hundred years the documents and the facts of Chris-
tianity have been exposed to a jealous scrutiny ; works
have been judged spurious which once were received with-
out a question; facts have been discarded or modified
which were once first principles in argument ; new facts
and new principles have been brought to light ; philo-
sophical views and polemical discussions of various
tendencies have been maintained with more or less success.
Not only have the relative situation of controversies and
theologies altered, but infidelity itself is in a different, —
I am obliged to say in a more hopeful position, — as regards
Christianity. The facts of Revealed Religion, though in
INTRODUCTION. 31
their substance unaltered, present a less compact and
orderly front to tlie attacks of its enemies now than
formerly, and allow of the introduction of new inquiries
and theories concerning its sources and its rise. The state
of things is not as it was, when an appeal lay to the sup-
posed works of the Areopagite, or to the primitive Decre-
tals, or to St. Dionysius's answers to Paul, or to the Crena
Domini of St. Cyprian. The assailants of dogmatic truth
have got the start of its adherents of whatever Creed ;
philosophy is completing what criticism has begun ; and
apprehensions are not unreasonably excited lest we should
have a new world to conquer before we have weapons for
the warfare. Already infidelity has its views and con-
jectures, on which it arranges the facts of ecclesiastical
history ; and it is sure to consider the absence of any
antagonist theory as an evidence of the reality of its own.
That the hypothesis, here to be adopted, accounts not only
for the Athanasian Creed, but for the Creed of Pope Pius,
is no fault of those who adopt it. No one has power over
the issues of his principles ; we cannot manage our argu-
ment, and have as much of it as we please and no more.
An argument is needed, unless Christianity is to abandon
the province of argument ; and those who find fault with
the explanation here offered of its historical phenomena
will find it their duty to provide one for themselves.
And as no special aim at Roman Catholic doctrine need
be supposed to have given a direction to the inquiry, so
neither can a reception of that doctrine be immediately
based on its results. It would be the work of a life to
apply the Theory of Developments so carefully to the
writings of the Fathers, and to the history of controversies
and councils, as thereby to vindicate the reasonableness of
every decision of Rome ; much less can such an undertaking
be imagined by one who, in the middle of his days, is
beginning life again. Thus much, however, mio-ht be
32 INTRODUCTION.
gained even from an Essay like the present, an explana-
tion of so many of the reputed corruptions, doctrinal and
practical, of Rome, as might serve as a fair ground for
trusting her in parallel cases where the investigation had
not been pursued.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS.
SECTION I.
ON THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS.
IT is the characteristic of our minds to be ever engaged
in passing judgment on the things which come before
*us. No sooner do we apprehend than we judge : we allow
nothing to stand by itself : we compare, contrast, abstract,
generalize, connect, adjust, classify : and we view all our
knowledge in the associations with which these processes
have invested it.
Of the judgments thus made, which become aspects in
our minds of the things which meet us, some are mere
opinions which come and go, or which remain with us
only till an accident displaces them, whatever be the
influence which they exercise meanwhile. Others are
firmly fixed in our minds, with or without good reason,
and have a hold upon us, whether they relate to matters of
fact, or to principles of conduct, or are views of life and
the world, or are prejudices, imaginations, or convictions.
Many of them attach to one and the same object, which is
thus variously viewed, not only by various minds, but by
the same. They sometimes lie in such near relation, that
D
34 ON THE PROCESS OF [('H. I.
each implies the others ; some are only not inconsistent with
each other, in that they have a common origin : some, as
being actually incompatible with each other, are one or
other falsely associated in our minds with the object, and
in any case they may be nothing more than ideas, which
we mistake for things.
Thus Judaism, is an idea which once was objective, and
Gnosticism is an idea which was never so. Both of them
have various aspects ; those of Judaism were such as mono-
theism, a certain ethical discipline, a ministration of divine
vengeance, a preparation for Christianity : those of the
Gnostic idea are such as the doctrine of two principles,
that of emanation, the intrinsic malignity of matter, the
inculpability of sensual indulgence, or the guilt of every
pleasure of sense, of which last two one or other must be
in the Gnostic a false aspect and subjective only.
2.
The idea which represents an object or supposed object
is commensurate with the sum total of its possible aspects,
however they may vary in the separate consciousness of
individuals ; and in proportion to the variety of aspects
under which it presents itself to various minds is its force
and depth, and the argument for its reality. Ordinarily
an idea is not brought home to the intellect as objective
except through this variety ; like bodily substances, which
are not apprehended except under the clothing of their
properties and results, and which admit of being walked
round, and surveyed on opposite sides, and in different
perspectives, and in contrary lights, in evidence of their
reality. And, as views of a material object may be taken
from points so remote or so opposed, that they seem at
first sight incompatible, and especially as their shadows
will be disproportionate, or even monstrous, and yet all
these anomalies will disappear and all these contrarieties
SECT. 1.] DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS. 35
be adjusted, on ascertaining the point of vision or the
surface of projection in each case ; so also all the aspects of
an idea are capable of coalition, and of a resolution into
the object to which it belongs ; and the primd facie dis-
similitude of its aspects becomes, when explained, an argu-
ment for its substantiveness and integrity, and their multi-
plicity for its originality and power.
3.
There is no one aspect deep enough to exhaust the con-
tents of a real idea, no one term or proposition which will
serve to define it ; though of course one representation of
it is more just and exact, than another, and though when
an idea is very complex, it is allowable, for the sake of con-
venience, to consider its distinct aspects as if separate ideas.
Thus, with all our intimate knowledge of animal life and
of the structure of particular animals, we have not arrived
at a true definition of any one of them, but are forced to
enumerate properties and accidents by way of description.
Nor can we inclose in a formula that intellectual fact, or
system of thought, which we call the Platonic philosophy,
or that historical phenomenon of doctrine and conduct,
which we call the heresy of Montanus or of Manes. Again,
if Protestantism were said to lie in its theory of private
judgment, and Lutheranism in its doctrine of justification,
this indeed would be an approximation to the truth ; but
it is plain that to argue or to act as if the one or the other
aspect were a sufficient account of those forms of religion
severally, would be a serious mistake. Sometimes an
attempt is made to determine the " leading idea," as it has
been called, of Christianity, an ambitious essay as employed
on a supernatural work, when, even as regards the visible
creation and the inventions of man, such a task is beyond
us. -Thus its one idea has been said by some to be the
restoration of our fallen race, by others philanthropy, by
D 2*
36 ON THE PROCESS OF [CH. 1.
others the tidings of immortality, or the spirituality of
true religious service, or the salvation of the elect, or
mental liberty, or the union of the soul with God. If,
indeed, it is only thereby meant to use one or other of
these as a central idea for convenience, in order to group
others round it, no fault can be found with such a proceed-
ing: and in this sense I should myself call the Incarnation
the central aspect of Christianity, out of which the three
main aspects of its teaching take their rise, the sacramen-
tal, the hierarchical, and the ascetic. But one aspect of
Revelation must not be allowed to exclude or to obscure
another ; and Christianity is dogmatical, devotional,
practical all at once ; it is esoteric and exoteric : it is
indulgent and strict ; it is light and dark ; it is love, and
it is fear.
4.
When an idea, whether real or not, is of a nature to
arrest and possess the mind, it may be said to have life,
that is, to live in the mind which is its recipient. Thus
mathematical ideas, real as they are, can hardly properly
be called living, at least ordinarily. But, when some
great enunciation, whether true or false, about human
nature, or present good, or government, or duty, or religion,
is carried forward into the public throng of men and
draws attention, then it is not merely received passively
in this or that form into many minds, but it becomes an
active principle within them, leading them to an ever-new
contemplation of itself, to an application of it in various
directions, and a propagation of it on every side. Such is
the doctrine of the divine right of kings, or of the rights
of man, or of the anti-social bearings of a priesthood, or
utilitarianism, or free trade, or the duty of benevolent
enterprises, or the philosophy of Zeno or Epicurus, doctrines
which are of a nature to attract and influence, and have so
SECT. I.] DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS. 37
far a primd facie reality, that they may be looked at on
many sides and strike various minds very variously. Let one
such idea get possession of the popular mind, or the mind
of any portion of the community, and it is not difficult to
understand what will be the result. At first men will not
fully realize what it is that moves them, and will express
and explain themselves inadequately. There will be a
general agitation of thought, and an action of mind upon
mind. There will be a time of confusion, when conceptions
and misconceptions are in conflict, and it is uncertain
whether anything is to come of the idea at all, or which
view of it is to get the start of the others. New lights will
be brought to bear upon the original statements of the doc-
trine put forward ; judgments and aspects will accumulate.
After a while some definite teaching emerges ; and, as time
proceeds, one view will be modified or expanded by another,
and then combined with a third ; till the idea to which
these various aspects belong, will be to each mind separately
what at first it was only to all together. It will be sur-
veyed too in its relation to other doctrines or facts, to other
natural laws or established customs, to the varying circum-
stances of times and places, to other religions, polities,
philosophies, as the case may be. How it stands affected
towards other systems, how it affects them, how far it may
be made to combine with them, how far it tolerates them,
when it interferes with them, will be gradually wrought
out. It will be interrogated and criticized by enemies, and
defended by well-wishers. The multitude of opinions
formed concerning it in these respects and many others
will be collected, compared, sorted, sifted, selected, rejected,
gradually attached to it, separated from it, in the minds
of individuals and of the community. It will, in propor-
tion to its native vigour and subtlety, introduce itself into
the framework and details of social life, changing public
opinion, and strengthening or undermining the foundations
38 ON THE PROCESS OF [CH. T.
of established order. Thus in time it will have grown
into an ethical code, or into a system of government, or
into a theology, or into a ritual, according to its capabili-
ties : and this body of thought, thus laboriously gained,
will after all be little more than the proper representative
of one idea, being in substance what that idea meant from
the first, its complete image as seen in a combination of
diversified aspects, with the suggestions and corrections of
many minds, and the illustrations of many experiences.
5.
This process, whether it be longer or shorter in point of
time, by which the aspects of an idea are brought into
consistency and form, I call its development, being the
germination and maturation of some truth or apparent
truth on a large mental field. On the other hand this pro-
cess will not be a development, unless the assemblage of
aspects, which constitute its ultimate shape, really belongs
to the idea from which they start. A republic, for instance,
is not a development from a pure monarchy, though it may
follow upon it ; whereas the Greek " tyrant " may be
considered as included in the idea of a democracy. More-
over a development will have this characteristic, that, its
action being in the busy scene of human life, it cannot
progress at all without cutting across, and thereby des-
troying or modifying and incorporating with itself existing
modes of thinking and operating. The development then
of an idea is not like an investigation worked out on paper,
in which each successive advance is a pure evolution from
a foregoing, but it is carried on through and by means of
communities of men and their leaders and guides ; and it
employs their minds as its instruments, and depends
upon them, while it uses them. And so, as regards exist-
ing opinions, principles, measures, and institutions of the
community which it has invaded ; it developes by esta-
SECT. I.] DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS. 39
Wishing relations between itself and them ; it employs it-
self, in giving them a new meaning and direction, in
creating what may be called a jurisdiction over them, in
throwing off whatever in them it cannot assimilate. It
grows when it incorporates, and its identity is found, not
in isolation, but in continuity and sovereignty. This it is
that imparts to the history both of states and of religions,
its specially turbulent and polemical character. Such is
the explanation of the wranglings, whether of schools or of
parliaments. It is the warfare of ideas under their various
aspects striving for the mastery, each of them enterprising,
engrossing, imperious, more or less incompatible with the
rest, and rallying followers or rousing foes, according as
it acts upon the faith, the prejudices, or the interest of
parties or classes.
6.
Moreover, an idea not only modifies, but is modified, or
at least influenced, by the state of things in which it is
carried out, and is dependent in various ways on the cir-
cumstances which surround it. Its development proceeds
quickly or slowly, as it may be ; the order of succession
in its separate stages is variable ; it shows differently in
a small sphere of action and in an extended ; it may be
interrupted, retarded, mutilated, distorted, by external
violence ; it may be enfeebled by the effort of ridding itself
of domestic foes ; it may be impeded and swayed or even
absorbed by counter energetic ideas ; it may be coloured
by the received tone of thought into which it comes, or
depraved by the intrusion of foreign principles, or at length
shattered by the development of some original fault within
it.
7.
But, whatever be the risk of corruption from intercourse
with the world around, such a risk must be encountered
40 ON THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS. [CH. I.
if a great idea is duly be to understood, and much more if
it is to be fully exhibited. It is elicited and expanded by
trial, and battles into perfection and supremacy. Nor does
it escape the collision of opinion even in its earlier years,
nor does it remain truer to itself, and with a better claim
to be considered one and the same, though externally pro-
tected from vicissitude and change. It is indeed some-
times said that the stream is clearest near the spring.
Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does
not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which
on the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger,
when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full. It
necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for
a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs disen-
gaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is em-
ployed in efforts after freedom which become more vigorous
and hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no
measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no
one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains per-
haps for a time quiescent ; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and
proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time
to time it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence
abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go ; it
wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction.
In time it enters upon strange territory ; points of con-
troversy alter their bearing ; parties rise and fall around
it ; dangers and hopes appear in new relations ; and old
principles reappear under new forms. It changes with
them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it
is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to
be perfect is to have changed often.
SECT. II.] OX THE KINDS OF DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS. 4l
SECTION II.
ON THE KINDS OF DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS.
To attempt an accurate analysis or complete enumera-
tion of the processes of thought, whether speculative or
practical, which come under the notion of development,
exceeds the pretensions of an Essay like the present ; but,
without some general view of the various menta1 exercises
which go by the name, we shall have no security against con-
fusion in our reasoning and necessary exposure to criticism.
1. First, then, it must be borne in mind that the word
is commonly used, and is used here, in three senses indis-
criminately, from defect of our language ; on the one hand
for the process of development, on the other for the result ;
and again either generally for a development, true or not
true, (that is, faithful or unfaithful to the idea from which
it started,) or exclusively for a development deserving the
name. A false or unfaithful development is more properly
to be called a corruption.
2. Next, it is plain that mathematical developments, that
is, the system of truths drawn out from mathematical defi-
nitions or equations, do not fall under our present subject,
though altogether analogous to it. There can be no cor-
ruption in such developments, because they are conducted
on strict demonstration ; and the conclusions in which they
terminate, being necessary, cannot be declensions from the
original idea.
3. Nor, of course, do physical developments, as the
growth of animal or vegetable nature, come into considera-
tion here ; excepting that, together with mathematical,
they may be taken as illustrations of the general subject to
which we have to direct our attention.
4. Nor have we to consider material developments,
which, though effected by human contrivance, are still
42 ON THE KINDS OF [oil. I.
physical ; as the development, as it is called, of the national
resources. We speak, for instance, of Ireland, the United
States, or the valley of the Indus, as admitting of a great
development ; by which we mean, that those countries have
fertile tracts, or abundant products, or broad and deep
rivers, or central positions for commerce, or capacious and
commodious harbours, the materials and instruments of
wealth, and these at present turned to insufficient account.
Development in this case will proceed by establishing marts,
cutting canals, laying down railroads, erecting factories,
forming docks, and similar works, by which the natural
riches of the country may be made to yield the largest
return and to exert the greatest influence. In this sense,
art is the development of nature, that is, its adaptation to
the purposes of utility and beauty, the human intellect
being the developing power.
2.
5. When society and its various classes and interests are
the subject-matter of the ideas which are in operation, the
development may be called political; as we see it in the
growth of States or the changes of a Constitution.
Barbarians descend into southern regions from cupidity,
and their warrant is the sword : this is no intellectual pro-
cess, nor is it the mode of development exhibited in
civilized communities. Where civilization exists, reason,
in some shape or other, is the incentive or the pretence of
development. When an empire enlarges, it is on the call
of its allies, or for the balance of power, or from the
necessity of a demonstration of strength, or from a fear
for its frontiers. It lies uneasily in its territory, it is ill-
shaped, it has unreal boundary-lines, deficient communica-
tion between its principal points, or defenceless or turbu-
lent neighbours. Thus, of old time, Euboaa was necessary
for Athens, and Cythera for Sparta ; and Augustus left
SECT. II.] DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS. 43
his advice, as a legacy, to confine the Empire between the
Atlantic, the Rhine and Danube, the Euphrates, and the
Arabian and African deserts. In this day, we hear of the
Ehine being the natural boundary of France, and the
Indus of our Eastern empire ; and we predict that, in the
event of a war, Prussia will change her outlines in the
map of Europe. The development is material; but an
idea gives unity and force to its movement.
And so to take a case of national politics, a late writer
remarks of the Parliament of 1628 29, in its contest with
Charles, that, so far from encroaching on the just powers
of a limited monarch, it never hinted at the securities
which were necessary for its measures. However, "twelve
years more of repeated aggressions," he adds, "taught
the Long Parliament what a few sagacious men might
perhaps have already suspected; that they must recover
more of their ancient constitution, from oblivion ; that
they must sustain its partial weakness by new securities ;
that, in order to render the existence of monarchy com-
patible with that of freedom, they must not only strip it of
all it had usurped, but of something that was its own." l
Whatever be the worth of this author's theory, his facts or
representations are an illustration of a political development.
Again, at the present day, that Ireland should have a
population of one creed, and a Church of another, is felt to
be a political arrangement so unsatisfactory, that all par-
ties seem to agree that either the population will de-
velope in power or the Establishment in influence.
Political developments, though really the growth of
ideas, are often capricious and irregular from the nature
of their subject-matter. They are influenced by the
character of sovereigns, the rise and fall of statesmen, the
fate of battles, and the numberless vicissitudes of the
world. "Perhaps the Greeks would be still involved in
1 Hallam's Constit. Hist. ch. vii. p. 572.
44 ON THE KINDS OF [CH. I.
the heresy of the Monophysites," says Gibbon, "if the
Emperor's horse had not fortunately stumbled. Theodosius
expired, his orthodox sister succeeded to the throne." 2
3.
Again, it often happens, or generally, that various
distinct and incompatible elements are found in the
origin or infancy of polities, or indeed of philosophies,
some of which must be ejected before any satisfactory de-
velopments, if any, can take place. And they are com-
monly ejected by the gradual growth of the stronger.
The reign of Charles the First, just referred to, supplies
an instance in point.
Sometimes discordant ideas are for a time connected and
concealed by a common profession or name. Such is the
case of coalitions in politics and comprehensions in re-
ligion, of which commonly no good is to be expected.
Such is an ordinary function of committees and boards,
and the sole aim of conciliations and concessions, to make
contraries look the same, and to secure an outward agree-
ment where there is no other unity.
Again, developments, reactions, reforms, revolutions,
and changes of various kinds are mixed together in the
actual history of states, as of philosophical sects, so as to
make it very difficult to exhibit them in any scientific
analysis.
Often the intellectual process is detached from the prac-
tical, and posterior to it. Thus it was after Elizabeth had
established the Reformation that Hooker laid down his
theory of Church and State as one and the same, differing
only in idea ; and, after the Revolution and its political
consequences, that Warburton wrote his " Alliance."
And now again a new theory is needed for the constitutional
lawyer, in order to reconcile the existing political state of
2 ch. xlvii.
SECT. II.] DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS. 45
things with the just claims of religion. And so, again, in
Parliamentary conflicts, men first come to their conclusions
by the external pressure of events or the force of prin-
ciples, they do not know how ; then they have to speak,
and they look about for arguments : and a pamphlet is
published on the subject in debate, or an article appears
in a Review, to furnish common-places for the many.
Other developments, though political, are strictly sub-
jected and consequent to the ideas of which they are the
exhibitions. Thus Locke's philosophy was a real guide,
not a mere defence of the Revolution era, operating
forcibly upon Church and Government in and after his day.
Such too were the theories which preceded the overthrow
of the old regime in France and other countries at the end
of the last century.
Again, perhaps there are polities founded on no ideas
at all, but on mere custom, as among the Asiatics.
4.
6. In other developments the intellectual character is
so prominent that they may even be called logical, as in
the Anglican doctrine of the Royal Supremacy, which has
been created in the courts of law, not in the cabinet or on
the field. Hence it is carried out with a consistency and
minute application which the history of constitutions can-
not exhibit. It does not only exist in statutes, or in
articles, or in oaths, it is realized in details : as in the
conge d'elire and letter-missive on appointment of a
Bishop ; — in the forms observed in Privy Council on the
issuing of State Prayers ; — in certain arrangements observed
in the Prayer-book, where the universal or abstract
Church precedes the King, but the national or really
existing body follows him ; in printing his name in large
capitals, while the Holiest Names are in ordinary type,
and in fixing his arms in churches instead of the Crucifix ;
46 ON THE KINDS OF [cH. I.
moreover, perhaps, in placing "sedition, privy conspiracy,
and rebellion," before " false doctrine, heresy, and
schism in the Litany."
Again, when some new philosophy or its instalments are
introduced into the measures of the Legislature, or into
the concessions made to a political party, or into commer-
cial or agricultural policy, it is often said, " We have not
seen the end of this ;" " It is an earnest of future con-
cessions ;" " Our children will see." We feel that it has
unknown bearings and issues.
The admission of Jews to municipal offices has lately
been defended 3 on the ground that it is the introduction
of no new principle, but a development of one already re-
ceived ; that its great premisses have been decided long
since, and that the present age has but to draw the con-
clusion ; that it is not open to us to inquire what ought to
be done in the abstract, since there is no ideal model for
the infallible guidance of nations ; that change is only a
question of time, and that there is a time for all things ;
that the application of principles ought not to go beyond
the actual case, neither preceding nor coming after an
imperative demand ; that in point of fact Jews have lately
been chosen for offices, and that in point of principle the
law cannot refuse to legitimate such elections.
5.
7. Another class of developments may be called his-
torical; being the gradual formation of opinion concerning
persons, facts, and events. Judgments, which were at
one time confined to a few, at length spread through a
community, and attain general reception by the accumula-
tion and concurrence of testimony. Thus some authorita-
tive accounts die away; others gain a footing, and are
ultimately received as truths. Courts of law, Parliament-
3 Times newspaper of March, 1845.
SECT. II.] DEVELOPMENT IX IDEAS. 47
ary proceedings, newspapers, letters and other posthumous
documents, the industry of historians and biographers, and
the lapse of years which dissipates parties and prejudices,
are in this day the instruments of such development.
Accordingly the Poet makes Truth the daughter of Time.4
Thus at length approximations are made to a right
appreciation of transactions and characters. History can-
not be written except in an after-age. Thus by develop-
ment the Canon of the New Testament has been formed.
Thus public men are content to leave their reputation to
posterity ; great reactions take place in opinion ; nay,
sometimes men outlive opposition and obloquy. Thus
Saints are canonized in the Church, long after they have
entered into their rest.
6.
8. Moral developments are not properly matter for
argument and controversy, but are natural and personal,
substituting what is congruous, desirable, pious, appro-
priate, generous, for strictly logical inference. Bishop
Butler supplies us with a remarkable instance in the
beginning of the Second Part of his " Analogy/' As
principles imply applications, and general propositions in-
clude particulars, so, he tells us, do certain relations imply
correlative duties, and certain objects demand certain acts
and feelings. He observes that, even though we were not
enjoined to pay divine honours to the Second and Third
Persons of the Holy Trinity, what is predicated of Them
in Scripture would be an abundant warrant, an indirect
command, nay, a ground in reason, for doing so. " Does
not," he asks, " the duty of religious regards to both these
Divine Persons as immediately arise, to the view of reason,
out of the very nature of these offices and relations, as the
inward good-will and kind intention which we owe to our
4 Crabbe's Tales.
48 ON THE KINDS OF [CH. I.
fellow-creatures arises out of the common relations between
us and them ? " He proceeds to say that he is speaking of
the inward religious regards of reverence, honour, love,
trust, gratitude, fear, hope. " In what external manner
this inward worship is to be expressed, is a matter of pure
revealed command; . . but the worship, the internal
worship itself, to the Son and Holy Ghost, is no further
matter of pure revealed command than as the relations
they stand in to us are matter of pure revelation ; for, the
relations being known, the obligations to such internal
worship are obligations of reason, arising out of those
relations themselves." Here is a development of doctrine
into worship, of which parallel instances are obviously to
be found in the Church of Rome.
7.
A development, converse to that which Butler speaks of,
must next be mentioned. As certain objects excite certain
emotions and sentiments, so do sentiments imply objects
and duties. Thus conscience, the existence of which we
cannot deny, is a proof of the doctrine of a Moral
Governor, which alone gives it a meaning and a scope ;
that is, the doctrine of a Judge and Judgment to come
is a development of the phenomenon of conscience.
Again, it is plain that passions and affections are in
action in our minds before the presence of their proper
objects ; and their activity would of course be an antece-
dent argument of extreme cogency in behalf of the real
existence of those legitimate objects, supposing them un-
known. And so again, the social principle, which is
innate in us, gives a divine sanction to society and to civil
government. And the usage of prayers for the dead im-
plies certain circumstances of their state upon which such
devotions bear. And rites and ceremonies are natural
means through which the mind relieves itself of devotional
SECT. II.] DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS. 49
and penitential emotions. And sometimes the cultivation
of awe and love towards what is great, high, and unseen,
has led a man to the abandonment of his sect for some
more Catholic form of doctrine.
Aristotle furnishes us with an instance of this kind of
development in his account of the happy man. After
showing that his definition of happiness includes in itself
the pleasurable, which is the most obvious and popular
idea of happiness, he goes on to say that still external
goods are necessary to it, about which, however, the defi-
nition said nothing ; that is, a certain prosperity is by
moral fitness, not by logical necessity, attached to the
happy man. " For it is impossible," he observes, " or not
easy, to practise high virtue without abundant means.
Many deeds are done by the instrumentality of friends,
wealth and political power ; and of some things the absence
is a cloud upon happiness, as of noble birth, of hopeful
children, and of personal appearance : for a person utterly
deformed, or low-born, or bereaved and childless, cannot
quite be happy : and still less if he have very worthless
children or friends, or they were good and died."5
This process of development has been well delineated by
a living French writer, in his Lectures on European civi-
lization,, who shall be quoted at some length. " If we
reduce religion/' he says, " to a purely religious sentiment
... it appears evident that it must and ought to remain
a purely personal concern. But I am either strangely
mistaken, or this religious sentiment is not the complete
expression of the religious nature of man. Religion is, I
believe, very different from this, and much more extended.
There are problems in human nature, in human destinies,
which cannot be solved in this life, which depend on an
s Eth. Nic. i. 8.
E
50 O:N THE KINDS OF [en. i.
order of things unconnected with the visible world, but
which unceasingly agitate the human mind with a desire
to comprehend them. The solution of these problems is
the origin of all religion ; her primary object is to discover
the creeds and doctrines which contain, or are supposed to
contain it.
*' Another cause also impels mankind to embrace religion
. . . From whence do morals originate ? whither do they
lead? is this self-existing obligation to do good, an isolated
fact, without an author, without an end ? does it not con-
ceal, or rather does it not reveal to man, an origin, a destiny,
beyond this world ? The science of morals, by these
spontaneous and inevitable questions, conducts man to the
threshold of religion, and displays to him a sphere from
whence he has not derived it. Thus the certain and never-
failing sources of religion are, on the one hand, the pro-
blems of our nature ; on the other, the necessity of seeking
for morals a sanction, an origin, and an aim. It, there-
fore assumes many other forms beside that of a pure senti-
ment ; it appears a union of doctrines, of precepts, of
promises. This is what truly constitutes religion ; this is
its fundamental character ; it is not merely a form of
sensibility, an impulse of the imagination, a variety of
poetry.
" When thus brought back to its true elements, to its
essential nature, religion appears no longer a purely
personal concern, but a powerful and fruitful principle of
association. Is it considered in the light of a system of
belief, a system of dogmas ? Truth is not the heritage of
any individual, it is absolute and universal; mankind ought
to seek and profess it in common. Is it considered with
reference to the precepts that are associated with its
doctrines ? A law which is obligatory on a single indi-
vidual, is so on all ; it ought to be promulgated, and it is
our duty to endeavour to bring all mankind under its
SECT. II.] DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS. 51
dominion. It is the same with respect to the promises that
religion makes, in the name of its creeds and precepts ;
they ought to be diffused ; all men should be incited to
partake of their benefits. A religious society, therefore,
naturally results from the essential elements of religion,
and is such a necessary consequence of it that the term
which expresses the most energetic social sentiment, the
most intense desire to propagate ideas and extend society,
is the word prosefytism, a term which is especially applied
to religious belief, and in fact consecrated to it.
" When a religious society has ever been formed, when
a certain number of men are united by a common religious
creed, are governed by the same religious precepts, and
enjoy the same religious hopes, some form of government
is necessary. No society can endure a week, nay more, no
society can endure a single hour, without a government.
The moment, indeed, a society is formed, by the very fact
of its formation, it calls forth a government, — a govern-
ment which shall proclaim the common truth which is the
bond of the society, and promulgate and maintain the
precepts that this truth ought to produce. The necessity
of a superior power, of a form of government, is involved
in the fact of the existence of a religious, as it is in that of
any other society.
" And not only is a government necessary, but it natu-
rally forms itself. . . . When events are suffered to follow
their natural laws, when force does not interfere, power
falls into the hands of the most able, the most worthy,
those who are most capable of carrying out the principles
on which the society was founded. Is a warlike expedition
in agitation? The bravest take the command. Is the
object of the association learned research, or a scientific
undertaking ? The best informed will be the leader. . . .
The inequality of faculties and influence, which is the
foundation of power in civil life, has the same effect in a
E 2,
52 ON THE KINDS OF [cH. I.
religious society . . . Religion has no sooner arisen in the
human mind than a religious society appears ; and im-
mediately a religious society is formed, it produces its
government."6
9.
9. It remains to allude to what, unless the word were
often so vaguely and variously used, I should be led to call
metaphysical developments ; I mean such as are a mere
analysis of the idea contemplated, and terminate in its
exact and complete delineation. Thus Aristotle draws the
character of a magnanimous or of a munificent man ; thus
Shakspeare might conceive and bring out his Hamlet or
Ariel ; thus Walter Scott gradually enucleates his James,
or Dalgetty, as the action of his story proceeds ; and thus,
in the sacred province of theology, the mind may be em-
ployed in developing the solemn ideas which it has hitherto
held implicitly, and without subjecting them to its reflect-
ing and reasoning powers.
I have already treated of this subject at length, with a
reference to the highest theological subject, in a former
work, from which it will be sufficient here to quote some
sentences in explanation : —
" The mind which is habituated to the thought of God,
of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, naturally turns with a devout
curiosity to the contemplation of the object of its adoration,
and begins to form statements concerning it, before it knows
whither, or how far, it will be carried. One proposition
necessarily leads to another, and a second to a third ; then
some limitation is required ; and the combination of these
opposites occasions some fresh evolutions from the original
idea, which indeed can never be said to be entirely ex-
hausted. This process is its development, and results in a
series, or rather body, of dogmatic statements, till what was
6 Guizot, Europ. Civil., Lect. v., Beckwith's Translation.
SECT. II.] DEVELOPMENT IN IDEAS. 53
an impression on the Imagination has become a s}Tstem or
creed in the Reason.
"Now such impressions are obviously individual and
complete above other theological ideas, because they are
the impressions of Objects. Ideas and their developments
are commonly not identical, the development being but
the carrying out of the idea into its consequences. Thus
the doctrine of Penance may be called a development of
the doctrine of Baptism, yet still is a distinct doctrine ;
whereas the developments in the doctrines of the Holy
Trinity and the Incarnation are mere portions of the
original impression, and modes of representing it. As God
is one, so the impression which He gives us of Himself is
one ; it is not a thing of parts ; it is not a system ; nor is
it anything imperfect and needing a counterpart. It is
the vision of an object. When we pray, we pray, not to
an assemblage of notions or to a creed, but to One Indi-
vidual Being ; and when we speak of Him, we speak of a
Person, not of a Law or Manifestation . . . Religious men,
according to their measure, have an idea or vision of the
Blessed Trinity in Unity, of the Son Incarnate, and of His
Presence, not as a number of qualities, attributes, and
actions, not as the subject of a number of propositions, but
as one and individual, and independent of words, like an
impression conveyed through the senses .... Creeds and
dogmas live in the one idea which they are designed to
express, and which alone is substantive ; and are necessary,
because the human mind cannot reflect upon it except
piecemeal, cannot use it in its oneness and entireness, or
without resolving it into a series of aspects and rela-
tions."7
10.
So much on the development of ideas in various subject
matters : it may be necessary to add that, in many cases,
^ [Univ. Serm. xv. 20-23, pp. 329—332, ed. 3.]
54 ON THE KINDS OF DEVELOPMENT, ETC. [cH. I. SECT. II.
development simply stands for exliibition, as in some of the
instances adduced above. Thus both Calvinism and
Unitarianism may be called developments, that is, exhibi-
tions, of the principle of Private Judgment, though they
have nothing in common, viewed as doctrines.
As to Christianity, supposing the truths of which it
consists to admit of development, that development will be
one or other of the last five kinds. Taking the Incarna-
tion as its central doctrine, the Episcopate, as taught by
St. Ignatius, will be an instance of political development,
the Theotokos of logical, the determination of the date of
our Lord's birth of historical, the Holy Eucharist of
moral, and the Athanasian Creed of metaphysical.
55
CHAPTER II.
ON THE ANTECEDENT ARGUMENT IN BEHALF OF
DEVELOPMENTS IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
SECTION I.
DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE TO BE EXPECTED.
1. IF Christianity is a fact, and impresses an idea of itself
on our minds and is a subject matter of exercises of the
reason, that idea will in course of time expand into a
multitude of idea?, and aspects of ideas, connected and
harmonious with one another, and in themselves determinate
and immutable, as is the objective fact itself which is thus
represented. It is a characteristic of our minds, that they
cannot take an object in, which is submitted to them
simply and integrally. We conceive by means of defini-
tion or description ; whole objects do not create in the
intellect whole ideas, but are, to use a mathematical phrase,
thrown into series, into a number of statements, strengthen-
ing, interpreting, correcting each other, and with more or
less exactness approximating, as they accumulate, to a
perfect image. There is no other way of learning or of
teaching. We cannot teach except by aspects or views,
which are not identical with the thing itself which we are
teaching. Two persons may each convey the same truth
to a third, yet by methods and through representations
56 DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. IT.
altogether different. The same person will treat the same
argument differently in an essay or speech, according to
the accident of the day of writing, or of the audience, yet
it will be substantially the same.
And the more claim an idea has to be considered living,
the more various will be its aspects ; and the more social
and political is its nature, the more complicated and subtle
will be its issues, and the longer and more eventful will
be its course. And in the number of these special ideas,
which from their very depth and richness cannot be
fully understood at once, but are more and more clearly
expressed and taught the longer they last, — having aspects
many and bearings many, mutually connected and growing
one out of another, and all parts of a whole, with a
sympathy and correspondence keeping pace with the
ever-changing necessities of the world, multiform, prolific,
and ever resourceful, — among these great doctrines surely
we Christians shall not refuse a foremost place to
Christianity. Such, previously to the determination of
the fact, must be our anticipation concerning it from a
contemplation of its initial achievements.
2.
It may be objected that its inspired documents at once
determine the limits of its mission without further trouble ;
but ideas are in the writer and reader of the revelation,
not the inspired text itself: and the question is whether
those ideas which the letter conveys from writer to reader,
reach the reader at once in their completeness and accuracy
on his first perception of them, or whether they open out
in his intellect and grow to perfection in the course of time.
Nor could it surely be maintained without extravagance
that the letter of the New Testament, or of any assignable
number of books, comprises a delineation of all possible
SECT. I.] TO BE EXPECTED. 57
forms which a divine message will assume when submitted
to a multitude of minds.
Nor is the case altered by supposing that inspiration
provided in behalf of the first recipients of the Revelation,
what the Divine Fiat effected for herbs and plants in the
beginning, which were created in maturity. Still, the
time at length came, when its recipients ceased to be
inspired ; and on these recipients the revealed truths would
fall, as in other cases, at first vaguely and generally,
though in spirit and in truth, and would afterwards be
completed by developments.
Nor can it fairly be made a difficulty that thus to treat
of Christianity is to level it in some sort to sects and
doctrines of the world, and to impute to it the imperfections
which characterize the productions of man. Certainly it
is a sort of degradation of a divine work to consider it
under an earthly form ; but it is no irreverence, since our
Lord Himself, its Author and Guardian, bore one also.
Christianity differs from other religions and philosophies,
in what is superadded to earth from heaven ; not in kind,
but in origin ; not in its nature, but in its personal
characteristics ; being informed and quickened by what is
more than intellect, by a Divine Spirit. It is externally
what the Apostle calls an " earthen vessel," being the
religion of men. And, considered as such, it grows "in
wisdom and stature ;" but the powers which it wields, and
the words which proceed out of its mouth, attest its
miraculous nativity.
Unless then some special ground of exception can be
assigned, it is as evident that Christianity, as a doctrine
and worship, will develope in the minds of recipients, as
that it conforms in other respects, in its external propaga-
tion or its political framework, to the general methods by
which the course of things is carried forward.
58 DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. II.
3.
2. Again, if Christianity be an universal religion, suited
not simply to one locality or period, but to all times and
places, it cannot but vary in its relations and dealings
towards the world around it, that is, it will develope.
Principles require a very various application according as
persons and circumstances vary, and must be thrown into
new shapes according to the form of society which they
are to influence. Hence all bodies of Christians, orthodox
or not, develope the doctrines of Scripture. Few but will
grant that Luther's view of justification had never been
stated in words before his time ; that his phraseology
and his positions were novel, whether called for by
circumstances or not. It is equally certain that the
doctrine of justification defined at Trent was, in some
sense, new also. The refutation and remedy of errors
cannot precede their rise; and thus the fact of false
developments or corruptions involves the correspondent
manifestation of true ones. Moreover, all parties appeal to
Scripture, that is, argue - from Scripture ; but argument
implies deduction, that is, development. Here there is no
difference between early times and late, between a Pope ex
cathedra and an individual Protestant, except that their
authority is not on a par. On either side the claim of
authority is the same, and the process of development.
Accordingly , the common complaint of Protestants against
the Church of Rome is, not simply that she has added to
the primitive or the Scriptural doctrine, (for this they do
themselves,) but that she contradicts it, and moreover
imposes her additions as fundamental truths under sanction
of an anathema. For themselves they deduce by quite as
subtle a method, and act upon doctrines as implicit and on
reasons as little analyzed in time past, as Catholic schoolmen.
"What prominence has the Royal Supremacy in the New
SECT. I.] TO BE EXPECTED. 59
Testament, or the lawfulness of bearing arms, or the
duty of public worship, or the substitution of the first day
of the week for the seventh, or infant baptism, to say
nothing of the fundamental principle that the Bible and
the Bible only is the religion of Protestants ? These
doctrines and usages, true or not, which is not the question
here, are surely not gained by the direct use and immediate
application of Scripture, nor by a mere exercise of argu-
ment upon words and sentences placed before the eyes,
but by the unconscious growth of ideas suggested by the
letter and habitual to the mind.
4.
3. And, indeed, when we turn to the consideration of
particular doctrines on which Scripture lays the greatest
stress, we shall see that it is absolutely impossible for them
to remain in the mere letter of Scripture, if they are to be
more than mere words, and to convey a definite idea to
the recipient. When it is declared that "the Word
became flesh," three wide questions open upon us" on the
very announcement. What is meant by " the Word/'
what by " flesh," what by " became " ? The answers to
these involve a process of investigation, and are develop-
ments. Moreover, when they have been made, they will
suggest a series of secondary questions ; and, thus at length
a multitude of propositions is the result, which gather
round the inspired sentence of which they come, giving it
externally the form of a doctrine, and creating or deepen-
ing the idea of it in the mind.
It is true that, so far as such statements of Scripture
are mysteries, they are relatively to us but words, and
cannot be developed. But as a mystery implies in part
what is incomprehensible or at least unknown, so does it
in part imply what is not so ; it implies a partial mani-
festation, or a representation by economy. Because then
60 DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. II.
it is in a measure understood, it can so far be developed,
though, each result in the process will partake of the
dimness and confusion of the original impression.
5.
4. This moreover should be considered, — that great
questions exist in the subject-matter of which Scripture
treats, which Scripture does not solve ; questions too so
real, so practical, that they must be answered, and, unless
we suppose a new revelation, answered by means of the
revelation which we have, that is, by development. Such
is the question of the Canon of Scripture and its inspira-
tion : that is, whether Christianity depends upon a written
document as Judaism ; — if so, on what writings and how
many ; — whether that document is self-interpreting, or
requires a comment, and whether any authoritative com-
ment or commentator is provided ; — whether the revelation
and the document are commensurate, or the one outruns
the other ; — all these questions surely find no solution on
the surface of Scripture, nor indeed under the surface in
the case of most men, however long and diligent might be
their study of it. Nor were these difficulties settled by
authority, as far as we know, at the commencement of
the religion ; yet surely it is quite conceivable that an
Apostle might have dissipated them all in a few words,
had Divine Wisdom thought fit. But in matter of fact
the decision has been left to time, to the slow process of
thought, to the influence of mind upon mind, the issues of
controversy, and the growth of opinion.
6.
To take another instance just now referred to : — if there
was a point on which a rule was desirable from the first,
it was concerning the religious duties under which Chris-
tian parents lay as regards their children. It would be
SECT. I.] TO BE EXPECTED. 61
natural indeed in any Christian father, in the absence of
a rule, to bring his children for baptism ; such in this
instance would be the practical development of his faith
in Christ and love for his offspring ; still a development it
is, — necessarily required, yet, as far as we know, not
provided for his need by direct precept in the Revelation
as originally given.
Another very large field of thought, full of practical
considerations, yet, as far as our knowledge goes, but
partially occupied by any Apostolical judgment, is that
which the question of the effects of Baptism opens upon
us. That they who came in repentance and faith to that
Holy Sacrament received remission of sins, is undoubtedly
the doctrine of the Apostles ; but is there any means of a
second remission for sins committed after it ? St. Paul's
Epistles, where we might expect an answer to our inquiry,
contain no explicit statement on the subject ; what they
do plainly say does not diminish the difficulty ; — viz.,
first, that Baptism is intended for the pardon of sins be-
fore it, not in prospect ; next, that those who have re-
ceived the gift of Baptism in fact live in a state of holi-
ness, not of sin. How do statements such as these meet
the actual state of the Church as we see it at this day ?
Considering that it was expressly predicted that the
Kingdom of Heaven, like the fisher's net, should gather of
every kind, and that the tares should grow with the wheat
until the harvest, a graver and more practical question
cannot be imagined than that which it has pleased the
Divine Author of the Revelation to leave undecided, un-
less indeed there be means given in that Revelation of its
own growth or development. As far as the letter goes of the
inspired message, every one who holds that Scripture is
the rule of faith, as all Protestants do, must allow that
" there is not one of us but has exceeded by transgression
its revealed Ritual, and finds himself in consequence
62 DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. II.
thrown upon those infinite resources of Divine Love which
are stored in Christ, but have not been drawn out into
form in the appointments of the Gospel." l Since then
Scripture needs completion, the question is brought to this
issue, whether defect or inchoateness in its doctrines be or
be not an antecedent probability in favour of a development
of them.
7.
There is another subject, though not so immediately
practical, on which Scripture does not, strictly speaking,
keep silence, but says so little as to require, and so
much as to suggest, information beyond its letter, —
the intermediate state between death and the Resurrec-
tion. Considering the long interval which separates
Christ's first and second coming, the millions of faithful
souls who are waiting it out, and the intimate concern
which every Christian has in the determination of its
character, it might have been expected that Scripture
would have spoken explicitly concerning it, whereas in
fact its notices are but brief and obscure. We might in-
deed have argued that this silence of Scripture was inten-
tional, with a view of discouraging speculations upon the
subject, except for the circumstance that, as in^the question
of our post-baptismal state, its teaching seems to proceed
upon an hypothesis inapplicable to the state of the Church
since the time it was delivered. As Scripture contem-
plates Christians, not as backsliders, but as saints, so does
it apparently represent the Day of Judgment as imme-
diate, and the interval of expectation as evanescent. It
leaves on our minds the general impression that Christ was
returning on earth at once, "the time short," worldly
engagements superseded by " the present distress/' perse-
cutors urgent, Christians, as a body, sinless and expectant,
without home, without plan for the future, looking up to
1 Doctrine of Justification, Lect. xiii.
SECT. I.] TO BE EXPECTED. 63
heaven. But outward circumstances have changed, and
with the change, a different application of the revealed
word has of necessity been demanded, that is, a development.
When the nations were converted and offences abounded,
then the Church came out to view, on the one hand as
a temporal establishment, on the other as a remedial
system, and passages of Scripture aided and directed the
development which before were of inferior account. Hence
the doctrine of Penance as the complement of Baptism,
and of Purgatory as the explanation of the Intermediate
State. So reasonable is this expansion of the original
creed, that, when some ten years since the true doctrine
of Baptism was expounded among us without any men-
tion of Penance, our teacher was accused by many of us
of Novatianism ; while, on the other hand, heterodox
divines have before now advocated the doctrine of the
sleep of the soul because they said it was the only success-
ful preventive of belief in Purgatory.
8.
Thus developments of Christianity are proved to have
been in the contemplation of its Divine Author, by an
argument parallel to that by which we infer intelligence
in the system of the physical world. In whatever sense
the need and its supply are a proof of design in the visible
creation, in the same do the gaps, if the word may be
used, which occur in the structure of the original creed of
the Church, make it probable that those developments,
which grow out of the truths which lie around it, were
intended to fill them up.
Nor can it be fairly objected that in thus arguing we
are contradicting the great philosopher, who tells us, that
"upon supposition of God affording us light and instruction
by revelation, additional to what He has afforded us by
reason and experience, we are in no sort judges by what
64 DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. II.
methods, and in what proportion, it were be expected that
this supernatural light and instruction would be afforded
us," 2 because he is speaking of our judging before a revela-
tion is given. He observes that " we have no principles of
reason upon which to judge beforehand, how it were to be
expected Revelation should have been left, or what was
most suitable to the divine plan of government," in various
respects ; but the case is altogether altered when a Reve-
lation is vouchsafed, for then a new precedent, or what he
calls " principle of reason," is introduced, and from what
is actually put into our hands we can form a judgment
whether more is to be expected. Butler, indeed, as a
well-known passage of his work shows, is far from denying
the principle of progressive development.
5. The method of revelation observed in Scripture
abundantly confirms this anticipation. For instance,
Prophecy, if it had so happened, need not have afforded
a specimen of development ; separate predictions might
have been made to accumulate as time went on, prospects
might have opened, definite knowledge might have been
given, by communications independent of each other, as
St. John's Gospel or the Epistles of St. Paul are uncon-
nected with the first three Gospels, though the doctrine of
each Apostle is a development of their matter. But the
prophetic Revelation is, in matter of fact, not of this
nature, but a process of development : the earlier pro-
phecies are pregnant texts out of which the succeeding
announcements grow ; they are types. It is not that first
one truth is told, then another ; but the whole truth or
large portions of it are told at once, yet only in their rudi-
ments, or in miniature, and they are expanded and
finished in their parts, as the course of revelation proceeds.
2 Butler's Anal. ii. 3.
SECT. I.] TO BE EXPECTED. 65
The Seed of the woman was to bruise the serpent's head ;
the sceptre was not to depart from Judah till Shiloh came,
to whom was to be the gathering of the people. He was
to be Wonderful, Counsellor, the Prince of Peace. The
question of the Ethiopian rises in the reader's mind, " Of
whom speaketh the Prophet this ? " Every word requires
a comment. Accordingly, it is no uncommon theory with
unbelievers, that the Messianic idea, as they call it, was
gradually developed in the minds of the Jews by a con-
tinuous and traditional habit of contemplating it, and grew
into its full proportions by a mere human process ; and so
far seems certain, without trenching on the doctrine of
inspiration, that the books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus
are developments of the writings of the Prophets, expressed
under or elicited by current ideas in the Greek philosophy,
and ultimately adopted and ratified by the Apostle in his
Epistle to the Hebrews.
10.
But the whole Bible, not its prophetical portions only,
is written on the principle of development. As the Reve-
lation proceeds, it is ever new, yet ever old. St. John,
who completes it, declares that he writes no " new com-
mandment unto his brethren," but an old commandment
which they "had from the beginning." And then he
adds, " A new commandment I write unto you." The
same test of development is suggested in our Lord's words
on the Mount, as has already been noticed, " Think not
that I am come to destroy the Law and the Prophets ; I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil/"' He does not
reverse, but perfect, what has gone before. Thus with
respect to the evangelical view of the rite of sacrifice, first
the rite is enjoined by Moses ; next Samuel says, " to
obey is better than sacrifice ;" then Hosea, " I will have
mercy and not sacrifice;" Isaiah, "Incense is an abomi-
F
66 DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. IT.
nation unto me •" then Malaclii, describing tlie times of
the Gospel, speaks of the " pure offering " of wheatflour ;
and our Lord completes the development, when He speaks
of worshipping " in spirit and in truth." If there is any-
thing here left to explain, it will be found in the usage
of the Christian Church immediately afterwards, which
shows that sacrifice was not removed, but truth and spirit
added.
Nay, the effata of our Lord and His Apostles are of a
typical structure, parallel to the prophetic announcements
above mentioned, and predictions as well as injunctions of
doctrine. If then the prophetic sentences have had that
development which has really been given them, first by
succeeding revelations, and then by the event, it is pro-
bable antecedently that those doctrinal, political, ritual,
and ethical sentences, which have the same structure,
should admit the same expansion. Such are, " This is
My Body/' or " Thou art Peter, and upon this Hock I
will build My Church/' or " The meek shall inherit the
earth," or " Suffer little children to come unto Me," or
" The pure iu heart shall see God."
11.
On this character of our Lord's teaching, the following
passage may suitably be quoted from a writer already used.
" His recorded words and works when on earth . . . come
to us as the declarations of a Lawgiver. In the Old Cove-
nant, Almighty God first of all spoke the Ten Command-
ments from Mount Sinai, and afterwards wrote them. So
our Lord first spoke His own Gospel, both of promise and of
precept, on the Mount, and His Evangelists have recorded
it. Further when He delivered it, He spoke by way
of parallel to the Ten Commandments. And His style,
moreover, corresponds to the authority which He assumes.
It is of that solemn, measured, and severe character, which
SECT. I.] TO BE EXPECTED. 67
bears on the face of it tokens of its belonging to One who
spake as none other man could speak. The Beatitudes,
with which His Sermon opens, are an instance of this
incommunicable style, which befitted, as far as human
words could befit, God Incarnate.
" Nor is this style peculiar to the Sermon on the Mount.
All through the Gospels it is discernible, distinct from
any other part of Scripture, showing itself in solemn
declarations, canons, sentences, or sayings, such as legis-
lators propound, and scribes and lawyers comment on.
Surely everything our Saviour did and said is characterized
by mingled simplicity and mystery. His emblematical
actions, His typical miracles, His parables, His replies,
His censures, all are evidences of a legislature in germ,
afterwards to be developed, a code of divine truth which
was ever to be before men's eyes, to be the subject of
investigation and interpretation, and the guide in con-
troversy. ' Verily, verily, I say unto you,' — * But, I say
unto you,' — are the tokens of a supreme Teacher and
Prophet.
" And thus the Fathers speak of His teaching. ' His
sayings/ observes St. Justin, ' were short and concise ;
for He was no rhetorician, but His word was the power
of God.J And St. Basil, in like manner, ' Every deed and
every word of our Saviour Jesus Christ is a canon of piety
and virtue. "When then thou nearest word or deed of His,
do not hear it as by the way, or after a simple and carnal
manner, but enter into the depth of His contemplations,
become a communicant in truths mystically delivered to
thee.' " 3
'12.
Moreover, while it is certain that developments of
Revelation proceeded all through the Old Dispensation
a Proph. Office, Lect. xii. [Via Med. vol. i. pp. 292-3].
F 2
68 DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. II.
down to the very end of our Lord's ministry, on the other
hand, if we turn our attention to the beginnings of Apos-
tolical teaching after His ascension, we shall find ourselves
unable to fix an historical point at which the growth of
doctrine ceased, and the rule of faith was once for all
settled. Not on the day of Pentecost, for St. Peter had
still to learn at Joppa that he was to baptize Cornelius;
not at Joppa and Caesarea, for St. Paul had to write his
Epistles ; not on the death of the last Apostle, for St.
Ignatius had to establish the doctrine of Episcopacy ; not
then, nor for centuries after, for the Canon of the New Testa-
ment was still undetermined. Not in the Creed, which is
no collection of definitions, but a summary of certain
credenda, an incomplete summary, and, like the Lord's
Prayer or the Decalogue, a mere sample of divine truths,
especially of the more elementary. No one doctrine can
be named which starts complete at first, and gains nothing
afterwards from the investigations of faith and the attacks
of heresy. The Church went forth from the old world in
haste, as the Israelites from Egypt " with their dough
before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being
bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders."
13.
Further, the political developments contained in the
historical parts of Scripture are as striking as the pro-
phetical and the doctrinal. Can any history wear a more
human appearance than that of the rise and growth of the
chosen people to whom I have just referred ? What had
been determined in the counsels of the Lord of heaven and
earth from the beginning, what was immutable, what was
announced to Moses in the burning bush, is afterwards
represented as the growth of an idea under successive
emergencies. The Divine Voice in the bush had announced
the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt and their
SECT. I.] TO BE EXPECTED. 69
entrance into Canaan ; and added, as a token of the cer-
tainty of His purpose, " When thou hast brought forth
the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this
mountain/' Now this sacrifice or festival, which was but
incidental and secondary in the great deliverance, is for a
while the ultimate scope of the demands which Moses
makes upon Pharaoh. " Thou shalt come, thou and the
elders of Israel unto the King of Egypt, and ye shall
say unto him, The Lord God of the Hebrews hath met
with us, and now let us go, we beseech thee, three days'
journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the
Lord our God." It had been added that Pharaoh would
first refuse their request, but that after miracles he would
let them go altogether, nay with " jewels of silver and
gold, and raiment."
Accordingly the first request of Moses was, " Let us go,
we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert, and sacri-
fice unto the Lord our God." Before the plague of frogs
the warning is repeated, " Let My people go that they
may serve Me ;" and after it Pharaoh says, " I will let the
people go, that they may do sacrifice unto the Lord/' It
occurs again before the plague of flies ; and after it
Pharaoh offers to let the Israelites sacrifice in Egypt,
which Moses refuses on the ground that they will have to
" sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their
eyes." " We will go three days' journey into the wilder-
ness/' he proceeds, " and sacrifice to the Lord our God ;"
and Pharaoh then concedes their sacrificing in the wilder-
ness, " only," he says, " you shall not go very far away."
The demand is repeated separately before the plagues of
murrain, hail, and locusts, no mention being yet made of
anything beyond a service or sacrifice in the wilderness.
On the last of these interviews, Pharaoh asks an explana-
tion, and Moses extends his claim: " We will go with
our young and with our old, with our sons and with our
70 DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. IT.
daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go,
for we must hold a feast unto the Lord." That it was an
extension seems plain from Pharaoh's reply : " Go now ye
that are men, and serve the Lord, for that ye did desire."
Upon the plague of darkness Pharaoh concedes the ex-
tended demand, excepting the flocks and herds ;. but
Moses reminds him that they were implied, though not
expressed in the original wording : " Thou must give us
also sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice
unto the Lord our God." Even to the last, there was no
intimation of their leaving Egypt for good ; the issue was
left to be wrought out by the Egyptians. " All these thy
servants," says Moses, " shall come down unto me, and
bow down themselves unto me, saying, Get thee out and all
the people that follow thee, and after that I will go out ; "
and accordingly, after the judgment on the first-born, they
were thrust out at midnight, with their flocks and herds,
their kneading troughs and their dough, laden, too, with
the spoils of Egypt, as had been fore-ordained, yet ap-
parently by a combination of circumstances, or the com-
plication of a crisis. Yet Moses knew that their departure
from Egypt was final, for he took the bones of Joseph with
him ; and that conviction broke on Pharaoh soon, when
he and his asked themselves, " Why have we done this,
that we have let Israel go from serving us ? " But this
progress of events, vague and uncertain as it seemed to be,
notwithstanding the miracles which attended it, had been
directed by Him who works out gradually what He has
determined absolutely ; and it ended in the parting of the
Red Sea, and the destruction of Pharaoh's host, on his
pursuing them.
Moreover, from what occurred forty years afterwards,
when they were advancing upon the promised land, it
would seem that the original grant of territory did not in-
clude the country east of Jordan, held in the event by
SECT. I.] TO BE EXPECTED. 71
Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh ; at least they
undertook at first to leave Sihon in undisturbed possession
of his country, if he would let them pass through it, and
only on his refusing his permission did they invade and
appropriate it.
14.
6. It is in point to notice also the structure and style of
Scripture, a structure so unsystematic and various, and a
style so figurative and indirect, that no one would presume
at first sight to say what is in it and what is not. It can-
not, as it were, be mapped, or its contents catalogued ; but
after all our diligence, to the end of our lives and to the
end of the Church, it must be an unexplored and unsub-
dued land, with heights and valleys, forests and streams, on
the right and left of our path and close about us, full of
concealed wonders and choice treasures. Of no doctrine
whatever, which does not actually contradict what has been
delivered, can it be peremptorily asserted that it is not in
Scripture ; of no reader, whatever be his study of it, can it
be said that he has mastered every doctrine which it con-
tains. Butler's remarks on this subject were just now
referred to. "The more distinct and particular know-
ledge," he says, " of those things, the study of which the
Apostle calls ' going on unto perfection/ " that is, of the
more recondite doctrines of the gospel, " and of the pro-
phetic parts of revelation, like many parts of natural and
even civil knowledge, may require very exact thought and
careful consideration. The hindrances too of natural and
of supernatural light and knowledge have been of the same
kind. And as it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture
is not yet understood, so, if it ever comes to be understood,
before the ' restitution of all things/ and without miracu-
lous interpositions, it must be in the same way as natural
knowledge is come at, by the continuance and progress of
72 DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [cH. II.
learning and of liberty, and by particular persons attend-
ing to, comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered up
and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the
generality of the world. For this is the way in which all
improvements are made, by thoughtful men tracing on
obscure hints, as it were, dropped us by nature accidentally,
or which seem to come into our minds by chance. JSTor is
it at all incredible that a book, which has been so long in the
possession of mankind, should contain many truths as yet
undiscovered. For all the same phenomena, and the same
faculties of investigation, from which such great discoveries
in natural knowledge have been made in the present and
last age, were equally in the possession of mankind several
thousand years before. And possibly it might be intended
that events, as they come to pass, should open and ascer-
tain the meaning of several parts of Scripture."4 Butler
of course was not contemplating the case of new articles of
faith, or developments imperative on our acceptance, but
he surely bears witness to the probability of developments
taking place in Christian doctrine considered in themselves,
which is the point at present in question.
15.
It may be added that, in matter of fact, all the defini-
tions or received judgments of the early and medieval
Church rest upon definite, even though sometimes obscure
sentences of Scripture. Thus Purgatory may appeal to
the "saving by fire/' and " entering through much tribu-
lation into the kingdom of God ;" the communication of
the merits of the Saints to our " receiving a prophet's
reward" for "receiving a prophet in the name of a
prophet," and " a righteous man's reward '' for " receiving
a righteous man in the name of a righteous man ;" the
Real Presence to " This is My Body ;" Absolution to
4 ii. 3 ; vide also ii. 4, fin.
SECT. I.] TO BE EXPECTED. 73
" Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted ;" Extreme
Unction to " Anointing him with oil in the Name of the
Lord ;" Voluntary poverty to " Sell all that thou hast ;"
obedience to " He was in subjection to His parents ;" the
honour paid to creatures, animate or inanimate, to Laudate
Dominum in sanctis Ejus, and Adorate scabellum pedum Ejus;
and so of the rest.
16.
7. Lastty, while Scripture nowhere recognizes itself or
asserts the inspiration of those passages which are most
essential, it distinctly anticipates the development of
Christianity, both as a polity and as a doctrine. In one
of our Lord's parables " the Kingdom of Heaven " is even
compared to " a grain of mustard- seed, which a man took
and hid in his field ; which indeed is the least of all seeds,
but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and
becometh a tree," and, as St. Mark words it, te shooteth
out great branches, so that the birds of the air come and
lodge in the branches thereof." And again, in the same
chapter of St. Mark, " So is the kingdom of God, as if a
man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep,
and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and
grow up, he knoweth not how; for the earth bringeth
forth fruit of herself." Here an internal element of life,
whether principle or doctrine, is spoken of rather than
any mere external manifestation ; and it is observable
that the spontaneous, as well as the gradual, character of
the growth is intimated. This description of the process
corresponds to what has been above observed respecting
development, viz. that it is not an effect of wishing and
resolving, or of forced enthusiasm, or of any mechanism
of reasoning, or of any mere subtlety of intellect ; but
comes of its own innate power of expansion within the
mind in its season, though with the use of reflection and
74 DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE, ETC. [CH. II.
argument and original thought, more or less as it may
happen, with a dependence on the ethical growth of the
rniud itself, and with a reflex influence upon it. Again,
the Parable of the Leaven describes the development of
doctrine in another respect, in its active, engrossing, and
interpenetrating power.
17.
From the necessity, then, of the case, from the history
of all sects and parties in religion, and from the analogy
and example of Scripture, we may fairly conclude that
Christian doctrine admits of formal, legitimate, and true
developments, that is, of developments contemplated by its
Divine Author.
The general analogy of the world, physical and moral,
confirms this conclusion, as we are reminded by the great
authority who has already been quoted in the course of
this Section. " The whole natural world and government
of it," says Butler, " is a scheme or system ; not a fixed,
but a progressive one ; a scheme in which the operation
of various means takes up a great length of time before the
ends they tend to can be attained. The change of seasons,
the ripening of the fruits of the earth, the very history of
a flower is an instance of this ; and so is human life.
Thus vegetable bodies, and those of animals, though
possibly formed at once, yet grow up by degrees to a
mature state. And thus rational agents, who animate
these latter bodies, are naturally directed to form each his
own manners and character by the gradual gaining of
knowledge and experience, and by a long course of action,
Our existence is not only successive, as it must be of
necessity, but one state of our life and being is appointed
by God to be a preparation for another ; and that to be
the means of attaining to another succeeding one : infancy
to childhood, childhood to youth, youth to mature age.
SEC. II.] INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY, ETC. 75
Men are impatient, and for precipitating things ; but the
Author of Nature appears deliberate throughout His
operations, accomplishing His natural ends by slow suc-
cessive steps. And there is a plan of things beforehand
laid out, which, from the nature of it, requires various
systems of means, as well as length of time, in order to the
carrying on its several parts into execution. Thus, in the
daily course of natural providence, God operates in the
very same manner as in the dispensation of Christianity,
making one thing subservient to another ; this, to some-
what farther ; and so on, through a progressive series of
means, which extend, both backward and forward, beyond
our utmost view. Of this manner of operation, everything
we see in the course of nature is as much an instance as
any part of the Christian dispensation." 5
SECTION II.
AN INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY TO BE EXPECTED.
It has now been made probable that developments of
Christianity were but natural, as time went on, and were
to be expected ; and that these natural and true develop-
ments, as being natural and true, were of course con-
templated and taken into account by its Author, who in
designing the work designed its legitimate results. These,
whatever they turn out to be, may be called absolutely
" the developments " of Christianity. That, beyond reason-
able doubt, there are such is surely a great step gained in
the inquiry ; it is a momentous fact. The next question
is, What are they ? and to a theologian, who could take
a general view, and also possessed an intimate and minute
5 Analogy, ii. 4, ad Jin.
76 AN INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY [CH. II.
knowledge, of its history, they would doubtless on the
whole be easily distinguishable by their own characters,
and require no foreign aid to point them out, no external
authority to ratify them. But it is difficult to say who is
exactly in this position. Considering that Christians, from
the nature of the case, live under the bias of the doctrines,
and in the very midst of the facts, and during the process
of the controversies, which are to be the subject of criticism,
since they are exposed to the prejudices of birth, education,
place, personal attachment, engagements, and party, it can
hardly be maintained that in matter of fact a true develop-
ment carries with it always its own certainty even to the
learned, or that history, past or present, is secure from the
possibility of a variety of interpretations.
2.
I have already spoken on this subject, and from a very
different point of view from that which I am taking at
present : —
" Prophets or Doctors are the interpreters of the reve-
lation ; they unfold and define its mysteries, they illumi-
nate its documents, they harmonize its contents, they apply
its promises. Their teaching is a vast system, not to be
comprised in a few sentences, not to be embodied in one
code or treatise, but consisting of a certain body of Truth,
pervading the Church like an atmosphere, irregular in its
shape from its very profusion and exuberance ; at times
separable only in idea from Episcopal Tradition, yet at
times melting away into legend and fable ; partly written,
partly unwritten, partly the interpretation, ' partly the
supplement of Scripture, partly preserved in intellectual
expressions, partly latent in the spirit and temper of
Christians ; poured to and fro in closets and upon the
housetops, in liturgies, in controversial works, in obscure
fragments, in sermons, in popular prejudices, in local
SECT. II.] TO BE EXPECTED. 77
customs. This I call Prophetical Tradition, existing
primarity in the bosom of the Church itself, and recorded
in such measure as Providence has determined in the
writings of eminent men. Keep that which is committed
to thy charge, is St. Paul's injunction to Timothy; and
for this reason, because from its vastness and indefiniteness
it is especially exposed to corruption, if the Church fails in
vigilance. This is that body of teaching which is offered
to all Christians even at the present day, though in various
forms and measures of truth, in different parts of Christen-
dom, partly being a comment, partly an addition upon the
articles of the Creed." 6
If this be true, certainly some rule is necessary for
arranging and authenticating these various expressions
and results of Christian doctrine. No one will maintain
that all points of belief are of equal importance. " There
are what may be called minor points, which we may hold
to be true without imposing them as necessary ;" " there
are greater truths and lesser truths, points which it is
necessary, and points which it is pious to believe." 7 The
simple question is, How are we to discriminate the greater
from the less, the true from the false.
3.
This need of an authoritative sanction is increased by
considering, after M. Guizot's suggestion, that Christianity,
though represented in prophecy as a kingdom, came into
the world as an idea rather than an institution, and has
had to wrap itself in clothing and fit itself with armour of
its own providing, and to form the instruments and methods
of its prosperity and warfare. If the developments, which
have above been called moral, are to take place to any great
extent, and without them it is difficult to see how Chris-
tianity can exist at all, if only its relations towards civil
6 Proph. Office, x. [Via Med. p. 250]. ' [Ibid. pp. 247, 254.]
78 AN INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY [CH. II.
government have to be ascertained, or the qualifications
for the profession of it have to be defined, surely an
authority is necessary to impart decision to what is vague,
and confidence to what is empirical, to ratify the successive
steps of so elaborate a process, and to secure the validity
of inferences which are to be made the premisses of more
remote investigations.
Tests, it is true, for ascertaining the correctness of
developments in general may be drawn out, as I shall show
in the sequel ; but they are insufficient for the guidance of
individuals in the case of so large and complicated a pro-
blem as Christianity, though they may aid our inquiries
and support our conclusions in particular points. They
are of a scientific and controversial, not of a practical
character, and are instruments rather than warrants of
right decisions. Moreover, they rather serve as answers
to objections brought against the actual decisions of autho-
rity, than are proofs of the correctness of those decisions.
While, then, on the one hand, it is probable that some
means will be granted for ascertaining the legitimate and
true developments of Hevelation, it appears, on the other,
that these means must of necessity be external to the deve-
lopments themselves.
4.
Reasons shall be given in this Section for concluding
that, in proportion to the probability of true developments
of doctrine and practice in the Divine Scheme, so is the
probability also of the appointment in that scheme of an
external authority to decide upon them, thereby separating
them from the mass of mere human speculation, extrava-
gance, corruption, and error, in and out of which they
grow. This is the doctrine of the infallibility of the
Church ; for by infallibility I suppose is meant the power
SECT. II.] TO BE EXPECTED. 79
of deciding whether this, that, and a third, and any
number of theological or ethical statements are true.
5.
1. Let the state of the case be carefully considered. If
the Christian doctrine, as originally taught, admits of true
and important developments, as was argued in the foregoing
Section, this is a strong antecedent argument in favour of a
provision in the Dispensation for putting a seal of authority
upon those developments. The probability of their being
known to be true varies with that of their truth. The
two ideas indeed are quite distinct, I grant, of revealing
and of guaranteeing a truth, and they are often distinct in
fact There are various revelations all over the earth which
do not carry with them the evidence of their divinity.
Such are the inward suggestions and secret illuminations
granted to so many individuals ; such are the traditionary
doctrines which are found among the heathen, that "vague
and unconnected family of religious truths, originally from
God, but sojourning, without the sanction of miracle or a
definite home, as pilgrims up and down the world, and
discernible and separable from the corrupt legends with
which they are mixed, by the spiritual mind alone." 8
There is nothing impossible in the notion of a revelation
occurring without evidences that it is a revelation ; just as
human sciences are a divine gift, yet are reached by our
ordinary powers and have no claim on our faith. But
Christianity is not of this nature : it is a revelation which
comes to us as a revelation, as a whole, objectively, and
with a profession of infallibility ; and the only question to
be determined relates to the matter of the revelation. If
then there are certain great truths, or proprieties, or ob-
servances, naturally and legitimately resulting from the
doctrines originally professed, it is but reasonable to include
8 Arians, ch. i. sect. 3 [p. 82, ed. 3].
80 AN INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY [cH. II.
these true results in the idea of the revelation itself, to
consider them parts of it, and if the revelation be not only
true, but guaranteed as true, to anticipate that they too
will come under the privilege of that guarantee. Chris-
tianity, unlike other revelations of God's will, except
the Jewish, of which it is a continuation, is an objective
religion, or a revelation with credentials ; it is natural, I
say, to view it wholly as such, and not partly sui generis,
partly like others. Such as it begins, such let it be con-
sidered to continue ; granting that certain large develop-
ments of it are true, they must surely be accredited as true.
6.
2. An objection, however, is often made to the doctrine
of infallibility in limine, which is too important not to be
taken into consideration. It is urged that, as all religious
knowledge rests on moral evidence, not on demonstration,
our belief in the Church's infallibility must be of this
character ; but what can be more absurd than a probable
infallibility, or a certainty resting on doubt ? — I believe,
because I am sure; and I am sure, because I suppose.
Granting then that the gift of infallibility be adapted,
when believed, to unite all intellects in one common con-
fession, the fact that it is given is as difficult of proof as the
developments which it is to prove, and nugatory therefore,
and in consequence improbable in a Divine Scheme. The
advocates of Rome, it has been urged, " insist on the
necessity of an infallible guide in religious matters, as an
argument that such a guide has really been accorded.
Now it is obvious to inquire how individuals are to know
with certainty that Rome is infallible . . . how any
ground can be such as to bring home to the mind infallibly
that she is infallible ; what conceivable proof amounts to
more than a probability of the fact ; and what advantage is
an infallible guide, if those who are to be guided have,
SECT. II.] TO BE EXPECTED. 81
after all, no more than an opinion, as the Romanists call
it, that she is infallible ? " 9
7.
This argument, however, except when used, as is in-
tended in this passage, against such persons as would
remove all imperfection in the proof of Religion, is certainly
a fallacious one. For since, as all allow, the Apostles were
infallible, it tells against their infallibility, or the infalli-
bility of Scripture, as truly as against the infallibility of
the Church ; for no one will say that the Apostles were
made infallible for nothing, yet we are only morally certain
that they were infallible. Further, if we have but proba-
ble grounds for the Church's infallibility, we have but the
like for the impossibility of certain things, the necessity of
others, the truth, the certainty of others ; and therefore
the words infallibility, necessity, truth, and certainty ought
all of them to be banished from the language. But why
is it more inconsistent to speak of an uncertain infallibility
than of a doubtful truth or a contingent necessity, phrases
which present ideas clear and undeniable ? In sooth we
are playing with words when we use arguments of this
sort. When we say that a person is infallible, we mean
no more than that what he says is always true, always to be
believed, always to bs done. The term is resolvable into
these phrases as its equivalents j either then the phrases
are inadmissible, or the idea of infallibility must be allowed.
A probable infallibility is a probable gift of never erring ;
a reception of the doctrine of a probable infallibility is faith
and obedience towards a person founded on the probability
of his never erring in his declarations or commands.
What is inconsistent in this idea ? Whatever then be the
particular means of determining infallibility, the abstract
objection may be put aside.1
9 Proph. Office [Via Med. vol. i. p. 122].
1 [" It is very common to confuse infallibility with certitude, but the two
G
82 AN INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY [dl. II.
8.
3. Again, it is sometimes argued that such, a dispensa-
tion would destroy our probation, as dissipating doubt,
precluding the exercise of faith, and obliging us to obey
whether we wish it or no ; and it is urged that a Divine
Yoice spoke in the first age, and difficulty and darkness
rest upon all subsequent ones ; as if infallibility and per-
sonal judgment were incompatible ; but this is to confuse
the subject. We must distinguish between a revelation
and a reception of it, not between its earlier and later stages.
A revelation, in itself divine, and guaranteed as such,
may from first to last be received, doubted, argued against,
perverted, rejected, by individuals according to the state
of mind of each. Ignorance, misapprehension, unbelief,
and other causes, do not at once cease to operate because the
revelation is in itself true and in its proofs irrefragable. We
have then no warrant at all for saying that an accredited
revelation will exclude the existence of doubts and diffi-
culties on the part of those whom it addresses, or dispense
with anxious diligence on their part, though it may in its
words stand for things quite distinct from each other. I remember for
certain what I did yesterday, but still my memory is not infallible. I am
quite clear that two and two makes four, but I often make mistakes in long
addition sums. I have no doubt whatever that John or Richard is my true
friend ; but I have before now trusted those who failed me, and I may do
so again before I die. I am quite certain that Victoria is our sovereign,
and not her father, the Duke of Kent, without any claim to the gift of
infallibility, as I may do a virtuous action, without being impeccable. I
may be certain that the Church is infallible, while I am myself a fallible
mortal ; otherwise I cannot be certain that the Supreme Being is infallible,
unless I am infallible myself. Certitude is directed to one or other definite
concrete proposition. I am certain of propositions one, two, three, four, or
five, one by one, each by itself. I can be certain of one of them, without
being certain of the rest : that I am certain of the first makes it neither
likely nor unlikely that I am certain of the second : but, were I infallible,
then I should be certain, not only of one of them, but of all." — Essay on
Assent, ch. vii. sect. 2.]
SECT. II.] TO BE EXPECTED. 83
own nature tend to do so. Infallibility does not interfere
with moral probation ; the two notions are absolutely
distinct. It is no objection then to the idea of a peremp-
tory authority, such as I am supposing, that it lessens the
task of personal inquiry, unless it be an objection to the
authority of Revelation altogether. A Church, or a
Council, or a Pope, or a Consent of Doctors, or a Consent of
Christendom, limits the inquiries of the individual in no
other way than Scripture limits them : it does limit them ;
but, while it limits their range, it preserves intact their
probationary character ; we are tried as really, though not
on so large a field. To suppose that the doctrine of a per-
manent authority in matters of faith interferes with our
free-will and responsibility is, as before, to forget that
there were infallible teachers in the first age, and heretics
and schismatics in the ages subsequent. There may have
been at once a supreme authority from first to last, and a
moral judgment from first to last. Moreover, those who
maintain that Christian truth must be gained solely by
personal efforts are bound to show that methods, ethical
and intellectual, are granted to individuals sufficient for
gaining it ; else the mode of probation they advocate is
less, not more, perfect than that which proceeds upon ex-
ternal authority. On the whole, then, no argument
against continuing the principle of objectiveness into the
developments of Revelation arises out of the conditions of
our moral responsibility.
9.
4. Perhaps it will be urged that the Analogy of Nature
is against our anticipating the continuance of an external
authority which has once been given ; because, in the
words of the profound thinker who has already been cited,
' We are wholly ignorant what degree of new knowledge
it were to be expected God would give mankind by reve-
G 2
84 AN INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY [CH. II.
lation, upon supposition of His affording one; or how far
and in what way, He would interpose miraculously to
qualify them to whom He should originally make the
revelation for communicating the knowledge given by it,
and to secure their doing it to the age in which they should
live, and to secure its being transmitted to posterity ; "
and because " we are not in any sort able to judge whether
it were to be expected that the revelation should have been
committed to writing, or left to be handed down, and con-
sequently corrupted, by verbal tradition, and at length
sunk under it." 2 But this reasoning does not here apply,
as has already been observed ; it contemplates only the
abstract hypothesis of a revelation, not the fact of an exist-
ing revelation of a particular kind, which may of course in
various ways modify our state of knowledge, by settling
some of those very points which, before it was given,
we had no means of deciding. Nor can it, as I think, be
fairly denied that the argument from analogy in one point
of view tells against anticipating a revelation at all, for an
innovation upon the physical order of the world is by the
very force of the terms inconsistent with its ordinary
course. "We cannot then regulate our antecedent view of
the character of a revelation by a test which, applied
simply, overthrows the very notion of a revelation alto-
gether. Any how, Analogy is in some sort violated by
the fact of a revelation, and the question before us only
relates to the extent of that violation.
10.
I will hazard a distinction here between the facts of
revelation and its principles : — the argument from Analogy
is more concerned with its principles than with its facts.
The revealed facts are special and singular, not analogous
from the nature of the case : but it is otherwise with the
2 Anal. ii. 3.
SECT. II.] TO BE EXPECTED. 85
revealed principles ; they are common to all the works of
God : and if the Author of Nature be the Author of Grace,
it may be expected that, while the two systems of facts
are distinct and independent, the principles displayed in
them will be the same, and form a connecting link between
them. In this identity of principle lies the Analogy of
Natural and Revealed Religion, in Butler's sense of the
word. The doctrine of the Incarnation is a fact, and
cannot be paralleled by anything in nature ; the doctrine
of Mediation is a principle, and is abundantly exemplified
in its provisions. Miracles are facts ; inspiration is a
fact ; divine teaching once for all, and a continual teach-
ing, are each a fact ; probation by means of intellectual
difficulties is a principle both in nature and in grace, and
may be carried on in the system of grace either by a
standing ordinance of teaching or by one definite act of
teaching, and that with an analogy equally perfect in either
case to the order of nature ; nor can we succeed in arguing
from the analogy of that order against a standing guardian-
ship of revelation without arguing also against its original
bestowal. Supposing the order of nature once broken by
the introduction of a revelation, the continuance of that
revelation is but a question of degree ; and the circum-
stance that a work has begun makes it more probable than
not that it will proceed. We have no reason to suppose
that there is so great a distinction of dispensation between
ourselves and the first generation of Christians, as that
they had a living infallible guidance, and we have
not.
The case then stands thus : — Revelation has introduced
a new law of divine governance over and above those laws
which appear in the natural course of the world ; and in
consequence we are able to argue for the existence of a
standing authority in matters of faith on the analogy of
Nature, and from the fact of Christianity. Preservation is
86 AN INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY [CH. IT.
involved in the idea of creation. As the Creator rested on
the seventh day from the work which He had made, yet
He " worketh hitherto;" so He gave the Creed once for
all in the beginning, yet blesses its growth still, and pro-
vides for its increase. His word " shall not return unto
Him void, but accomplish" His pleasure. As creation
argues continual governance, so are Apostles harbingers of
Popes.
11.
5. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that, as the
essence of all religion is authority and obedience, so the
distinction between natural religion and revealed lies in this,
that the one has a subjective authority, and the other an
objective. Revelation consists in the manifestation of the
Invisible Divine Power, or in the substitution of the voice of
a Lawgiver for the voice of conscience. The supremacy of
conscience is the essence of natural religion ; the supre-
macy of Apostle, or Pope, or Church, or Bishop, is the
essence of revealed ; and when such external authority is
taken away, the mind falls back again of necessity upon
that inward guide which it possessed even before Revela-
tion was vouchsafed. Thus, what conscience is in the
system of nature, such is the voice of Scripture, or of the
Church, or of the Holy See, as we may determine it, in the
system of Revelation. It may be objected, indeed, that
conscience is not infallible ; it is true, but still it is ever to
be obeyed. And this is just the prerogative which contro-
versialists assign to the See of St. Peter ; it is not in all
cases infallible, it may err beyond its special province, but
it has in all cases a claim on our obedience. " All Catholics
and heretics/' says Bellarmine, ''agree in two things:
first, that it is possible for the Pope, even as pope, and
with his own assembly of councillors, orwithGreneralCouncil,
to err in particular controversies of fact, which chiefly
SECT. II.] TO BE EXPECTED. 87
depend on human information and testimony ; secondly,
that it is possible for him to err as a private Doctor, even in
universal questions of right, whether of faith or of morals,
and that from ignorance, as sometimes happens to other
doctors. Next, all Catholics agree in other two points, not,
however, with heretics, but solely with each other : first,
that the Pope with General Council cannot err, either in
framing decrees of faith or general precepts of morality ;
secondly, that the Pope when determining anything in a
doubtful matter, whether by himself or with his own par-
ticular Council, whether it is possible for him to err or not, is
to be obeyed by all the faithful." 3 And as obedience to con-
science, even supposing conscience ill-informed, tends to
the improvement of our moral nature, and ultimately of
our knowledge, so obedience to our ecclesiastical superior
may subserve our growth in illumination and sanctity,
even though he should command what is extreme or
inexpedient, or teach what is external to his legitimate
province.
12.
6. The common sense of mankind does but support a
conclusion thus forced upon us by analogical considerations.
It feels that the very idea of revelation implies a present
informant and guide, and that an infallible one ; not a
mere abstract declaration of Truths unknown before to
man, or a record of history, or the result of an antiquarian
research, but a message and a lesson speaking to this man
and that. This is shown by the popular notion which has
prevailed among us since the Reformation, that the Bible
itself is such a guide ; and which succeeded in overthrow-
ing the supremacy of Church and Pope, for the very reason
3 De Rom. Pont. iv. 2. [Seven years ago, it is scarcely necessary to say,
the Vatican Council determined that the Pope, ex cafhedrh, has the same
infallibility as the Church. This does not affect the argument in the text.]
88 AN INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY [CH. II.
that it was a rival authority, not resisting merely, but
supplanting it. In proportion, then, as we find, in matter
of fact, that the inspired Volume is not adapted or intended
to subserve that purpose, are we forced to revert to that
living and present Guide, which, at the era of her rejection,
had been so long recognized as the dispenser of Scripture,
according to times and circumstances, and the arbiter of all
true doctrine and holy practice to her children. "We feel
a need, and she alone of all things under heaven supplies
it. We are told that Grod has spoken. Where? In a
book ? "We have tried it and it disappoints ; it disappoints
us, that most holy and blessed gift, not from fault of its
own, but because it is used for a purpose for which it was
not given. The Ethiopian's reply, when St. Philip asked
him if he understood what he was reading, is the voice of
nature : " How can I, unless some man shall guide me ? "
The Church undertakes that office ; she does what none
else can do, and this is the secret of her power. " The
human mind/' it has been said, " wishes to be rid of doubt
in religion ; and a teacher who claims infallibility is
readily believed on his simple word. We see this con-
stantly exemplified in the case of individual pretenders
among ourselves. In Romanism the Church pretends to it ;
she rids herself of competitors by forestalling them. And
probably, in the eyes of her children, this is not the least
persuasive argument for her infallibility, that she alone
of all Churches dares claim it, as if a secret instinct and
involuntary misgivings restrained those rival communions
which go so far towards affecting it." 4 These sentences,
whatever be the errors of their wording, surely express a
great truth. The most obvious answer, then, to the
question, why we yield to the authority of the Church in
the questions and developments of faith, is, that some
authority there must be if there is a revelation given, and
* Proph. Office [Via Med, vol. i. p. 117].
SECT. II.] TO BE EXPECTED. 89
other [authority there is none but she. A revelation is
not given, if there be no authority to decide what it is that
is given. In the words of St. Peter, to her Divine Master
and Lord, " To whom shall we go ? " Nor must it be for-
gotten in confirmation, that Scripture expressly calls the
Church " the pillar and ground of the Truth/' and promises
her as by covenant that " the Spirit of the Lord that is
upon her, and His words which He has put in her mouth
shall not depart out of her mouth, nor out of the mouth of
her seed, nor out of the mouth of her seed's seed, from
henceforth and for ever." 5
13.
7. And if the very claim to infallible arbitration in
religious disputes is of so weighty importance and interest
in all ages of the world, much more is it welcome at a
time like the present, when the human intellect is so busy,
and thought so fertile, and opinion so manifold. The abso-
lute need of a spiritual supremacy is at present the strongest
of arguments in favour of the fact of its supply. Surely,
either an objective revelation has not been given, or it has
been provided with means for impressing its objectiveness
on the world. If Christianity be a social religion, as it
certainly is, and if it be based on certain ideas acknowledged
as divine, or a creed, (which shall here be assumed), and if
these ideas have various aspects, and make distinct impres-
sions on different minds, and issue in consequence in a
multiplicity of developments, true, or false, or mixed, as
has been shown, what power will suffice to meet and to do
justice to these conflicting conditions, but a supreme
authority ruling and reconciling individual judgments by
a divine right and a recognized wisdom ? In barbarous
times the will is reached through the senses ; but in an
age in which reason, as it is called, is the standard of
* 1 Tiin. iii. 16 ; Isa. lix. 21.
90 AN INFALLIBLE DEVELOPING AUTHORITY [cH. II.
truth and right, it is abundantly evident to any one, who
mixes ever so little with the world, that, if things are left
to themselves, every individual will have his own view of
things, and take his own course ; that two or three agree
together to-day to part to-morrow ; that Scripture will be
read in contrary ways, and history, according to the
apologue, will have to different comers its silver shield and
its golden ; that philosophy, taste, prejudice, passion,
party, caprice, will find no common measure, unless there
be some supreme power to control the mind and to compel
agreement.
There can be no combination on the basis of truth
without an organ of truth. As cultivation brings out
the colours of flowers, and domestication changes the
character of animals, so does education of necessity develope
differences of opinion ; and while it is impossible to lay
down first principles in which all will unite, it is utterly
unreasonable to expect that this man should yield to that,
or all to one. I do not say there are no eternal truths,
such as the poet speaks of,6 which all acknowledge in pri-
vate, but that there are none sufficiently commanding to
be the basis of public union and action. The only general
persuasive in matters of conduct is authority ; that is, when
truth is in question, a judgment which we feel to be
superior to our own. If Christianity is both social and dog-
matic, and intended for all ages, it must humanly speaking
have an infallible expounder. Else you will secure unity
of form at the loss of unity of doctrine, or unity of doctrine
at the loss of unity of form ; you will have to choose be-
tween a comprehension of opinions and a resolution into
parties, between latitudinarian and sectarian error. You
may be tolerant or intolerant of contrarieties of thought,
but contrarieties you will have. By the Church of England
a hollow uniformity is preferred to an infallible chair ; and
6 Ou yap ri vvv ye KaxOes, K.T.\.
SECT. II.] TO BE EXPECTED. 91
by the sects of England, an interminable division. Ger-
many and Geneva began with persecution, and have ended
in scepticism. The doctrine of infallibility is a less violent
hypothesis than this sacrifice either of faith or of charity.
It secures the object, while it gives definiteness and force
to the matter, of the Revelation.
14.
8. I have called the doctrine of Infallibility an hypo-
thesis : let it be so considered for the sake of argument, that
is, let it be considered to be a mere position, supported by
no direct evidence, but required by the facts of the case,
and reconciling them with each other. That hypothesis
is indeed, in matter of fact, maintained and acted on in the
largest portion of Christendom, and from time immemorial;
but let this coincidence be accounted for by the need.
Moreover, it is not a naked or isolated fact, but the ani-
mating principle of a large scheme of doctrine which the
need itself could not simply create ; but again, let this
system be merely called its development. Yet even as an
hypothesis, which has been held by one out of various
communions, it may not be lightly put aside. Some
hypothesis, this or that, all parties, all controversialists, all
historians must adopt, if they would treat of Christianity
at all. Gieseler's " Text Book " bears the profession of
being a dry analysis of Christian history ; yet on inspec-
tion it will be found to be written on a positive and definite
theory, and to bend facts to meet it. An unbeliever, as
Gibbon, assumes one hypothesis, and an Ultra-montane, as
Baronius, adopts another. The School of liurd and
Newton hold, as the only true view of history, that
Christianity slept for centuries upon centuries, except
among those whom historians call heretics. Others speak
'as if the oath of supremacy or the conge d'e lire could be
made the measure of St.. Ambrose, and they fit the Thirty-
92 THE EXISTING DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. II.
nine Articles on the fervid Tertullian. The question is,
which of all these theories is the simplest, the most natural,
the most persuasive. Certainly the notion of development
under infallible authority is not a less grave, a less winning
hypothesis, than the chance and coincidence of events, or
the Oriental Philosophy, or the working of Antichrist, to
account for the rise of Christianity and the formation of
its theology.
SECTION III.
THE EXISTING DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE THE PROBABLE
FULFILMENT OF THAT EXPECTATION.
I have been arguing, in respect to the revealed doctrine,
given to us from above in Christianity, first, that, in con-
sequence of its intellectual character, and as passing through
the minds of so many generations of men, and as applied
by them to so many purposes, and as investigated so
curiously as to its capabilities, implications, and bearings,
it could not but grow or develope, as time went on, into
a large theological system ; — next, that, if development
must be, then, whereas Revelation is a heavenly gift, He
who gave it virtually has not given it, unless He has also
secured it from perversion and corruption, in all such
development as comes upon it by the necessity of its
nature, or, in other words, that that intellectual action
through successive generations, which is the organ of
development, must, so far forth as it can claim to have
been put in charge of the Eevelation, be in its determina-
tions infallible.
Passing from these two points, I come next to the
question whether in the history of Christianity there is any
fulfilment of such anticipation as I have insisted on,
SECT. III.] THE FULFILMENT OF THAT EXPECTATION. 93
whether in matter-of-fact doctrines, rites, and usages have
grown up round the Apostolic Creed and have interpene-
trated its Articles, claiming to be part of Christianity and
looking like those additions which we are in search of.
The answer is, that such additions there are, and that they
are found just where they might be expected, in the
authoritative seats and homes of old tradition, the Latin and
Greek Churches. Let me enlarge on this point.
2.
I observe, then, that, if the idea of Christianity, as
originally given to us from heaven, cannot but contain
much which will be only partially recognized by us as
included in it and only held by us unconsciously ; and if
again, Christianity being from heaven, all that is neces-
sarily involved in it, and is evolved from it, is from heaven,
and if, on the other hand, large accretions actually do exist,
professing to be its true and legitimate results, our first im-
pression naturally is, that these must be the very develop-
ments which they profess to be. Moreover, the very scale
on which they have been made, their high antiquity yet
present promise, their gradual formation yet precision,
their harmonious order, dispose the imagination most
forcibly towards the belief that a teaching so consistent
with itself, so well balanced, so young and so old, not
obsolete after so many centuries, but vigorous and pro-
gressive still, is the very development contemplated in the
Divine Scheme. These doctrines are members of one
family, and suggestive, or correlative, or confirmatory, or
illustrative of each other. One furnishes evidence to
another, and all to each of them ; if this is proved, that
becomes probable ; if this and that are both probable, but
for different reasons, each adds to the other its own proba-
bility. The Incarnation is the antecedent of the doctrine
of Mediation, and the archetype both of the Sacramental
94 THE EXISTING DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. II.
principle and of the merits of Saints. From the doctrine of
Mediation follow the Atonement, the Mass, the merits of
Martyrs and Saints, their invocation and cultus. From the
Sacramental principle come the Sacraments properly so
called ; the unity of the Church, and the Holy See as its
type and centre ; the authority of Councils ; the sanctity of
rites ; the veneration of holy places, shrines, images, vessels,
furniture, and vestments. Of the Sacraments, Baptism is
developed into Confirmation on the one hand ; into Penance,
Purgatory, and Indulgences on the other ; and the Eucha-
rist into the Real Presence, adoration of the Host, Resur-
rection of the body, and the virtue of relics. Again, the
doctrine of the Sacraments leads to the doctrine of Justifica-
tion ; Justification to that of Original Sin ; Original Sin to
the merit of Celibacy. Nor do these separate developments
stand independent of each other, but by cross relations they
are connected, and grow together while they grow from one.
The Mass and Real Presence are parts of one ; the venera-
tion of Saints and their relics are parts of one ; their
intercessory power and the Purgatorial State, and again
the Mass and that State are correlative ; Celibacy is the
characteristic mark of Monachism and the Priesthood. You
must accept the whole or reject the whole ; attenuation
does but enfeeble, and amputation mutilate. It is trifling
to receive all .but something which is as integral as any
other portion ; and, on the other hand, it is a solemn thing
to accept any part, for, before you know where you are,
you may be carried on by a stern logical necessity to
accept the whole.
3.
Next, we have to consider that from first to last other
developments there are none, except those which have
possession of Christendom ; none, that is. of prominence
and permanence sufficient to deserve the name. In early
SECT. III.] THE FULFILMENT OF THAT EXPECTATION. 95
times the heretical doctrines were confessedly barren and
short-lived, and could not stand their ground against
Catholicism. As to the medieval period I am not aware
that the Greeks present more than a negative opposition to
the Latins. And now in like manner the Tridentine
Creed is met by no rival developments ; there is no antago-
nist system. Criticisms, objections, protests, there are in
plenty, but little of positive teaching anywhere ; seldom
an attempt on the part of any opposing school to master
its own doctrines, to investigate their sense and bearing,
to determine their relation to the decrees of Trent and
their distance from them. And when at any time this
attempt is by chance in any measure made, then an incu-
rable contrariety does but come to view between portions
of the theology thus developed, and a war of principles ;
an impossibility moreover of reconciling that theology with
the general drift of the formularies in which its elements
occur, and a consequent appearance of unfairness and
sophistry in adventurous persons who aim at forcing them
into consistency ;7 and, further, a prevalent understanding
of the truth of this representation, authorities keeping
silence, eschewing a hopeless enterprise and discouraging
it in others, and the people plainly intimating that they
think both doctrine and usage, antiquity and development,
of very little matter at all ; and, lastly, the evident despair
of even the better sort of men, who, in consequence, when
they set great schemes on foot, as for the conversion of the
heathen world, are afraid to agitate the question of the
doctrines to which it is to be converted, lest through the
opened door they should lose what they have, instead of
gaining what they have not. To the weight of recom-
mendation which this contrast throws upon the develop-
ments commonly called Catholic, must be added the
7 {Vid. Via Media, vol. ii. pp. 251—341.]
98 THE EXISTING DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE [CH. II.
argument which arises from the coincidence of their
consistency and permanence, with their claim of an infal-
lible sanction, — a claim, the existence of which, in some
quarter or other of the Divine Dispensation, is, as we have
already seen, antecedently probable. All these things
being considered, I think few persons will deny the very
strong presumption which exists, that, if there must be and
are in fact developments in Christianity, the doctrines
propounded by successive Popes and Councils, through so
many ages, are they.
4.
A further presumption in behalf of these doctrines arises
from the general opinion of the world about them. Chris-
tianity being one, all its doctrines are necessarily develop-
ments of one, and, if so, are of necessity consistent with
each other, or form a whole. Now the world fully enters
into this view of those well-known developments which
claim the name of Catholic. It allows them that title, it
considers them to belong to one family, and refers them to
one theological system. It is scarcely necessary to set
about proving what is urged by their opponents even more
strenuously than by their champions. Their opponents
avow that they protest, not against this doctrine or that,
but against one and all ; and they seem struck with
wonder and perplexity, not to say with awe, at a consist-
ency which they feel to be superhuman, though they would
not allow it to be divine. The system is confessed on all
hands to bear a character of integrity and indivisibility
upon it, both at first view and on inspection. Hence
such sayings as the " Tota jacet Babylon " of the distich.
Luther did but a part of the work, Calvin another portion,
Socinus finished it. To take up with Luther, and to reject
Calvin and Socinus, would be, according to that epigram,
like living in a house without a roof to it. This, I say, is
SECT. III.] THE FULFILMENT OF THAT EXPECTATION. 97
no private judgment of this man or that, but the common
opinion and experience of all countries. The two great
divisions of religion feel it, Roman Catholic and Protestant,
between whom the controversy lies ; sceptics and liberals,
who are spectators of the conflict, feel it ; philosophers feel it.
A school of divines there is, I grant, dear to memory, who
have not felt it ; and their exception will have its weight,
—till we reflect that the particular theology which they
advocate has not the prescription of success, never has been
realized in fact, or, if realized for a moment, had no stay ;
moreover, that, when it has been enacted by human
authority, it has scarcely travelled beyond the paper on
which it was printed, or out of the legal forms in which it
was embodied. But, putting the weight of these revered
names at the highest, they do not constitute more than an
exception to the general rule, such as is found in every sub-
ject that comes into discussion.
5.
And this general testimony to the oneness of Catholicism
extends to its past teaching relatively to its present, as well
as to the portions of its present teaching one with another.
No one doubts, with such exception as has just been allowed,
that the Roman Catholic communion of this day is the
successor and representative of the Medieval Church, or
that the Medieval Church is the legitimate heir of the
Nicene ; even allowing that it is a question whether a line
cannot be drawn between the Nicene Church and the
Church which preceded it. On the whole, all parties will
agree that, of all existing systems, the present communion
of Rome is the nearest approximation in fact to the Church
of the Fathers, possible though some may think it, to be
nearer still to that Church on paper. Did St. Athanasius
or St. Ambrose come suddenly to life, it cannot be doubted
what communion he would mistake for his own. All
98 THE EXISTING DEVELOPMENTS, ETC. [CH. II. SECT. III.
surely will agree that these Fathers, with whatever
opinions of their own, whatever protests, if we will, would
find themselves more at home with such men as St. Bernard
or St. Ignatius Loyola, or with the lonely priest in his
lodging, or the holy sisterhood of mercy, or the unlettered
crowd before the altar, than with the teachers or with
the members of any other creed. And may we not add,
that were those same Saints, who once sojourned, one in
exile one on embassy, at Treves, to come more northward
still, and to travel until they reached another fair city,
seated among groves, green meadows, and calm streams,
the holy brothers would turn from many a high aisle and
solemn cloister which they found there, and ask the way
to some small chapel where mass was said in the populous
alley or forlorn suburb ? And, on the other hand, can
any one who has but heard his name, and cursorily read
his history, doubt for one instant how, in turn, the people
of England, " we, our princes, our priests, and our pro-
phets/' Lords and Commons, Universities, Ecclesiastical
Courts, marts of commerce, great towns, country parishes,
would deal with Athanasius, — Athanasius, who spent his
long years in fighting against sovereigns for a theological
term ?
CHAPTER III.
ON THE HISTOKICAL ARGUMENT IN BEHALF OF THE
EXISTING DEVELOPMENTS.
SECTION I.
METHOD OF PROOF.
IT seems, then, that we have to deal with a case something
like the following : Certain doctrines come to us, professing
to be Apostolic, and possessed of such high antiquity that,
though we are only able to assign the date of their formal
establishment to the fourth, or the fifth, or the eighth, or the
thirteenth century, as it may happen, yet their substance
may, for what appears, be coeval with the Apostles, and be
expressed or implied in texts of Scripture. Further, these
existing doctrines are universally considered, without any
question, to be the echo in each age of the doctrines
of the times immediately preceding them, and thus are
continually thrown back to a date indefinitely early, even
though their ultimate junction with the Apostolic Creed be
out of sight and unascertainable. Moreover, they are
confessed to form one body one with another, so that to
reject one is to disparage the rest ; and they include within
the range of their system even those primary articles of
faith, as the Incarnation, which many an impugner of
the said doctrinal system, as a system, professes to accept,
H 2
100 METHOD OF PROOF. [CH. III.
and which, do what he will, he cannot intelligibly separate,
whether in point of evidence or of internal character, from
others which he disavows. Further, those doctrines
occupy the whole field of theology, and leave nothing to be
supplied, except in detail, by any other system ; while, in
matter of fact, no rival system is forthcoming, so that we
have to choose between this theology and none at all.
Moreover, this theology alone makes provision for that
guidance of opinion and conduct, which seems externally
to be the special aim of Revelation ; and fulfils the
promises of Scripture, by adapting itself to the various
problems of thought and practice which meet us in life.
And, further, it is the nearest approach, to say the least,
to the religious sentiment, and what is called ethos, of the
early Church, nay, to that of the Apostles and Prophets ;
for all will agree so far as this, that Elijah, Jeremiah, the
Baptist, and St. Paul are in their history and mode of life
(I do not speak of measures of grace, no, nor of doctrine and
conduct, for these are the points in dispute, but) in what is
external and meets the eye (and this is no slight resem-
blance when things are viewed as a whole and from a
distance), — these saintly and heroic men, I say, are more
like a Dominican preacher, or a Jesuit missionary, or a
Carmelite friar, more like St. Toribio, or St. Vincent
Ferrer, or St. Francis Xavier, or St. Alphonso Liguori,
than to any individuals, or to any classes of men, that can
be found in other communions. And then, in addition,
there is the high antecedent probability that Providence
would watch over His own work, and would direct and ratify
those developments of doctrine which were inevitable.
2.
If this is, on the whole, a true view of the general shape
under which the existing body of developments, commonly
SECT. I.] METHOD OF PROOF. 101
called Catholic, present themselves before us, antecedently
to our looking into the particular evidence on which they
stand, I think we shall be at no loss to determine what
both logical truth and duty prescribe to us as to our
reception of them. It is very little to say that we should
treat them as we are accustomed to treat other alleged facts
and truths, and the evidence for them, which come to us
with a fair presumption in their favour. Such are of
every day's occurrence ; and what is our behaviour towards
them ? We meet them, not with suspicion and criticism,
but with a frank confidence. We do not in the first
instance exercise our reason upon opinions which are
received, but our faith. We do not begin with doubting ;
we take them on trust, and we put them on trial, and that,
not of set purpose, but spontaneously. We prove them by
using them, by applying them to the subject-matter, or the
evidence, or the body of circumstances, to which they
belong, as if they gave it its interpretation or its colour as
a matter of course ; and only when they fail, in the event,
in illustrating phenomena or harmonizing facts, do we
discover that we must reject the doctrines or the statements
which we had in the first instance taken for granted.
Again, we take the evidence for them, whatever it be, as a
whole, as forming a combined proof; and we interpret
what is obscure in separate portions by such portions as
are clear. Moreover, we bear with these in proportion to
the strength of the antecedent probability in their favour,
we are patient with difficulties in their application, with
apparent objections to them drawn from other matters of
fact, deficiency in their comprehensiveness, or want of
neatness in their working, if their claims on our attention
are considerable.
3.
Thus most men take Newton's theory of gravitation for
102 METHOD OF PROOF. [CH. III.
granted, because it is generally received, and use it without
rigidly testing it first, each for himself, (as it can be
tested,) by phenomena; and if phenomena are found
which it does not satisfactorily solve, this does not trouble
them, for a way there must be of explaining them, con-
sistently with that theory, though it does not occur to them-
selves. Again, if we found a concise or obscure passage in
one of Cicero's letters to Atticus, we should not scruple to
admit as its true explanation a more explicit statement in
his Ad Familiares. 2Eschylus is illustrated by Sophocles in
point of language, and Thucydides by Aristophanes, in
point of history. Horace, Persius, Suetonius, Tacitus, and
Juvenal may be made to throw light upon each other.
Even Plato may gain a commentator in Plotinus, and
St. Anselm is interpreted by St. Thomas. Two writers,
indeed, may be already known to differ, and then we do
not join them together as fellow- witnesses to common
truths; Luther has taken on himself to explain St.
Augustine, and Yoltaire, Pascal, without persuading the
world that they have a claim to do so ; but in no case do we
begin with asking whether a comment does not disagree with
its text, when there is aprimdfacie congruity between them.
We elucidate the text by the comment, though, or rather be-
cause, the comment is fuller and more explicit than the text.
4.
Thus too we deal with Scripture, when we have to
interpret the prophetical text and the types of the Old
Testament. The event which is the development is also
the interpretation of the prediction ; it provides a fulfil-
ment by imposing a meaning. And we accept certain
events as the fulfilment of prophecy from the broad
correspondence of the one with the other, in spite of many
incidental difficulties. The difficulty, for instance, in
accounting for the fact that the dispersion of the Jews
SECT. I.] METHOD OF PROOF. 103
followed upon their keeping, not their departing from
their Law, does not hinder us from insisting on their
present state as an argument against the infidel. Again,
we readily submit our reason on competent authority, and
accept certain events as an accomplishment of predictions,
which seem very far removed from them ; as in the passage,
"Out of Egypt have I called My Son." Nor do we find
a difficulty, when St. Paul appeals to a text of the
Old Testament, which stands otherwise in our Hebrew
copies ; as the words, " A body hast Thou prepared Me."
We receive such difficulties on faith, and leave them to
take care of themselves. Much less do we consider mere
fulness in the interpretation, or definiteness, or again
strangeness, as a sufficient reason for depriving the text,
or the action to which it is applied, of the advantage of
such interpretation. We make it no objection that the
words themselves come short of it, or that the sacred
writer did not contemplate it, or that a previous fulfilment
satisfies it. A reader who came to the inspired text by
himself, beyond the influence of that traditional acceptation
which happily encompasses it, wou]d be surprised to be
told that the Prophet's words, " A virgin shall conceive,"
&c., or " Let all the Angels of God worship Him," refer
to our Lord ; but assuming the intimate connexion between
Judaism and Christianity, and the inspiration of the New
Testament, we do not scruple to believe it. We rightly
feel that it is no prejudice to our receiving the prophecy of
Balaam in its Christian meaning, that it is adequately
fulfilled in David ; or the history of Jonah, that it is
poetical in character and has a moral in itself like an apo-
logue ; or the meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek, that it
is too brief and simple to mean any great thing, as St. Paul
interprets it.
5.
Butler corroborates these remarks, when speaking of
104 METHOD OF PROOF. [CH. III.
the particular evidence for Christianity. " The obscurity
or unintelligibleness/' he says, " of one part of a
prophecy does not in any degree invalidate the proof of
foresight, arising from the appearing completion of those
other parts which are understood. For the case is
evidently the same as if those parts, which are not
understood, were lost, or not written at all, or written in
an unknown tongue. Whether this observation be com-
monly attended to or not, it is so evident that one can
scarce bring one's self to set down an instance in com-
mon matters to exemplify it." l He continues, " Though
a man should be incapable, for want of learning, or oppor-
tunities of inquiry, or from not having turned his studies
this way, even so much as to judge whether particular
prophecies have been throughout completely fulfilled ; yet
he may see, in general, that they have been fulfilled to
such a degree, as, upon very good ground, to be convinced
of foresight more than human in such prophecies, and of
such events being intended by them. For the same
reason also, though, by means of the deficiencies in civil
history, and the different accounts of historians, the most
learned should not be able to make out to satisfaction that
such parts of the prophetic history have been minutely
and throughout fulfilled ; yet a very strong proof of fore-
sight may arise from that general completion of them
which is made out ; as much proof of foresight, perhaps,
as the Giver of prophecy intended should ever be afforded
by such parts of prophecy."
6.
He illustrates this by the parallel instance of fable and
concealed satire. " A man might be assured that he un-
derstood what an author intended by a fable or parable,
related without any application or moral, merely from see-
i Anal. ii. 7.
SECT. I.] METHOD OF PROOF. 105
ing it to be easily capable of such application, and that
such a moral might naturally be deduced front it. And
he might be fully assured that such persons and events
were intended in a satirical writing, merely from its being
applicable to them. And, agreeably to the last observa-
tion, he might be in a good measure satisfied of it, though
he were not enough informed in affairs, or in the story of
such persons, to understand half the satire. For his satis-
faction, that he understood the meaning, the intended
meaning, of these writings, would be greater or less, in
proportion as he saw the general turn of them to be capa-
ble of such application, and in proportion to the number
of particular things capable of it." And he infers hence,
that if a known course of events, or the history of a person
as our Lord, is found to answer on the whole to the pro-
phetical text, it becomes fairly the right interpretation
of that text, in spite of difficulties in detail. And this
rule of interpretation admits of an obvious application to the
parallel case of doctrinal passages, when a certain creed,
which professes to have been derived from Revelation,
comes recommended to us on strong antecedent grounds,
and presents no strong opposition to the sacred text.
The same author observes that the first fulfilment of
a prophecy is no valid objection to a second, when what
seems like a second has once taken place ; and, in like
manner, an interpretation of doctrinal texts may be literal,
exact, and sufficient, yet in spite of all this may not
embrace what is really the full scope of their meaning ;
and that fuller scope, if it so happen, may be less satis-
factory and precise, as an interpretation, than their
primary and narrow sense. Thus, if the Protestant inter-
pretation of the sixth chapter of St. John were true and
sufficient for its letter, (which of course I do not grant)
that would not hinder the Roman, which at least is quite
compatible with it, being the higher sense and the only
106 METHOD OF PROOF. [dl. III.
rightful. In such cases the justification of the larger and
higher interpretation lies in some antecedent probability,
such as Catholic consent ; and the ground of the narrow
is the context, and the rules of grammar ; and, whereas
the argument of the critical commentator is that the sacred
text need not mean more than the letter, those who adopt
a deeper view of it maintain, as Butler in the case of
prophecy, that we have no warrant for putting a limit to
the sense of words which are not human but divine.
7.
Now it is but a parallel exercise of reasoning to interpret
the previous history of a doctrine by its later development,
and to consider that it contains the later in posse and in
the divine intention ; and the grudging and jealous temper,
which refuses to enlarge the sacred text for the fulfilment
of prophecy, is the very same that will occupy itself
in carping at the Ante-nicene testimonies for Mcene or
Medieval doctrines and usages. When " I and My Father
are One " is urged in proof of our Lord's unity with the
Father, heretical disputants do not see why the words
must be taken to denote more than a unity of will. When
" This is My Body " is alleged as a warrant for the change
of the Bread into the Body of Christ, they explain away
the words into a figure, because such is their most obvious
interpretation. And, in like manner, when Roman
Catholics urge St. Gregory's invocations, they are told
that these are but rhetorical ; or St. Clement's allusion
to Purgatory, that perhaps it was Platonism ; or Origen's
language about praying to Angels and the merits of
Martyrs, that it is but an instance of his heterodoxy ; or
St. Cyprian's exaltation of the Cathedra Petri, that he
need not be contemplating more than a figurative or
abstract see; or the general testimony to the spiritual
authority of Borne in primitive times, that it arose from
SECT. I.J METHOD OF PROOF. 107
its temporal greatness ; or Tertullian's language about
Tradition and the Church, that he took a lawyer's view of
those subjects ; whereas the early condition, and the
evidence, of each doctrine respectively, ought consist-
ently to be interpreted by means of that development
which was ultimately attained.
8.
Moreover, since, as above shown, the doctrines all together
make up one integral religion, it follows that the several
evidences which respectively support those doctrines belong
to a whole, and must be thrown into a common stock, and all
are available in the defence of any. A collection of weak
evidences makes up a strong evidence ; again, one strong
argument imparts cogency to collateral arguments which
are in themselves weak. For instance, as to the miracles,
whether of Scripture or the Church, " the number of those
which carry with them their own proof now, and are
believed for their own sake, is small, and they furnish the
grounds on which we receive the rest." 2 Again, no one
would fancy it necessary, before receiving St. Matthew's
Gospel, to find primitive testimony in behalf of every
chapter and verse : when only part is proved to have been
in existence in ancient times, the whole is proved, because
that part is but part of a whole ; and when the whole is
proved, it may shelter such parts as for some incidental reason
have less evidence of their antiquity. Again, it would be
enough to show that St. Augustine knew the Italic version
of the Scriptures, if he quoted it once or twice. And, in
like manner, it will be generally admitted that the proof
of a Second Person in the Godhead lightens indefinitely
the burden of proof necessary for belief in a Third Person ;
and that, the Atonement being in some sort a correlative
of eternal punishment, the evidence for the former doc-
2 [On Miracles, Essay ii. 111.]
108 METHOD OF PROOF. [CH. III.
trine virtually increases the evidence for the latter. And
so, a Protestant controversialist would feel that it told
little, except as an omen of victory, to reduce an opponent
to a denial of Transubstantiation, if he still adhered firmly
to the Invocation of Saints, Purgatory, the Seven
Sacraments, and the doctrine of merit ; and little too for
one of his own party to condemn the adoration of the
Host, the supremacy of Rome, the acceptableness of celi-
bacy, auricular confession, communion under one kind,
and tradition, if he was zealous for the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception.
9.
The principle on which these remarks are made has the
sanction of some of the deepest of English Divines.
Bishop Butler, for instance, who has so often been quoted,
thus argues in behalf of Christianity itself, though con-
fessing at the same time the disadvantage which in conse-
quence the revealed system lies under. " Probable proofs,"
he observes, " by being added, not only increase the evi-
dence, but multiply it. Nor should I dissuade any one from
setting down what he thought made for the contrary
side. . . . The truth of our religion, like the truth of com-
mon matters, is to be judged by all the evidence taken
together. And unless the whole series of things which
may be alleged in tliis argument, and every particular
thing in it, can reasonably be supposed to have been by
accident (for here the stress of the argument for Chris-
tianity lies), then is the truth of it proved; in like
manner, as if, in any common case, numerous events
acknowledged were to be alleged in proof of any other
event disputed, the truth of the disputed event would be
proved, not only if any one of the acknowledged ones did
of itself clearly imply it, but though no one of them
singly did so, if the whole of the acknowledged events,
SECT. I.] METHOD OF PROOF. 109
taken together, could not in reason be supposed to have
happened, unless the disputed one were true.
" It is obvious how much advantage the nature of this
evidence gives to those persons who attack Christianity,
especially in conversation. For it is easy to show, in a
short and lively manner, that such and such things are
liable to objection, that this and another thing is of little
weight in itself; but impossible to show, in like manner,
the united force of the whole argument in one view/' 3
In like manner, Mr. Davison condemns that " vicious
manner of reasoning/7 which represents " any insufficiency
of the proof, in its several branches, as so much objection;"
which manages " the inquiry so as to make it appear that,
if the divided arguments be inconclusive one by one, we
have a series of exceptions to the truths of religion instead
of a train of favourable presumptions, growing stronger at
every step. The disciple of Scepticism is taught that he
cannot fully rely on this or that motive of belief, that each
of them is insecure, and the conclusion is put upon him
that they ought to be discarded one after another, instead
of being connected and combined." 4 No work perhaps
affords more specimens in a short compass of the breach of
the principle of reasoning inculcated in these passages,
than Barrow's Treatise on the Pope's Supremacy.
10.
The remarks of these two writers relate to the duty of
combining doctrines which belong to one body, and evi-
dences which relate to one subject ; and few persons would
dispute it in the abstract. The application which has been
here made of the principle is this, — that where a doctrine
comes recommended to us by strong presumptions of its
truth, we are bound to receive it unsuspiciously , and use it
as a key to the evidences to which it appeals, or the facts
8 Anal. ii. 7. 4 On Prophecy, i. p. 28.
110 STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. [CH. TIT.
which it professes to systematize, whatever may be our
eventual judgment about it. Nor is it enough to answer,
that the voice of our particular Church, denying this so-
called Catholicism, is an antecedent probability which
outweighs all others and claims our prior obedience,
loyally and without reasoning, to its own interpretation.
This may excuse individuals certainly, in beginning with
doubt and distrust of the Catholic developments, but it
only shifts the blame to the particular Church, Anglican
or other, which thinks itself qualified to enforce so
peremptory a judgment against the one and only successor,
heir and representative of the Apostolic college.
SECTION II.
STATE OF THE EVIDENCE.
Bacon is celebrated for destroying the credit of a method
of reasoning much resembling that which it has been the
object of this Chapter to recommend. " He who is not
practised in doubting," he says, " but forward in asserting
and laying down such principles as he takes to be approved,
granted, and manifest, and, according to the established
truth thereof, receives or rejects every thing, as squaring with
or proving contrary to them, is only fitted to mix and
confound things with words, reason with madness, and
the world with fable and fiction, but not to interpret the
works of nature." 5 But he was aiming at the application
of these modes of reasoning to what should be strict inves-
tigation, and that in the province of physics ; and this he
might well censure, without attempting, what is impossible,
to banish them from histor}^ ethics, and religion. Physi-
5 Aplior. 5, vol. iv. p. xi. ed. 1815.
SECT. II.] STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. Ill
cal facts are present ; they are submitted to the senses, and
the senses may be satisfactorily tested, corrected, and
verified. To trust to anything but sense in a matter of
sense is irrational ; why are the senses given us but to
supersede less certain, less immediate informants ? We
have recourse to reason or authority to determine facts,
when the senses fail us ; but with the senses we begin.
"We deduce, we form inductions, we abstract, we theorize
from facts ; we do not begin with surmise and conjecture,
much less do we look to the tradition of past ages, or the
decree of foreign teachers, to determine matters which are
in our hands and under our eyes.
But it is otherwise with history, the facts of which are
not present ; it is otherwise with ethics, in which pheno-
mena are more subtle, closer, and more personal to indi-
viduals than other facts, and not referable to any common
standard by which all men can decide upon them. In
such sciences, we cannot rest upon mere facts, if we would,
because we have not got them. We must do our best with
what is given us, and look about for aid from any quarter;
and in such circumstances the opinions of others, the
traditions of ages, the prescriptions of authority, antecedent
auguries, analogies, parallel cases, these and the like, not
indeed taken at random, but, like the evidence from the
senses, sifted and scrutinized, obviously become of great
importance.
2.
And, further, if we proceed on the hypothesis that a
merciful Providence has supplied us with means of gaining
such truth as concerns us, in different subject-matters,
though with different instruments, then the simple question
is, what those instruments are which are proper to a par-
ticular case. If they are of the appointment of a Divine
Protector, we may be sure that they will lead to the truth,
whatever they are. The less exact methods of reasoning
112 STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. [CH. III.
may do His work as well as the more perfect, if He blesses
them. He may bless antecedent probabilities in ethical
inquiries, who blesses experience and induction in the art
of medicine.
And if it is reasonable to consider medicine, or architec-
ture, or engineering, in a certain sense, divine arts, as
being divinely ordained means of our receiving divine
benefits, much more may ethics be called divine ; while as
to religion, it directly professes to be the method of recom-
mending ourselves to Him and learning His will. If then
it be His gracious purpose that we should learn it, the
means He gives for learning it, be they promising or not
to human eyes, are sufficient, because they are His. And
what they are at this particular time, or to this person,
depends on His disposition. He may have imposed
simple prayer and obedience on some men as the instrument
of their attaining to the mysteries and precepts of Chris-
tianity. He may lead others through the written word,
at least for some stages of their course ; and if the formal
basis on which He has rested His revelations be, as it is,
of an historical and philosophical character, then antece-
dent probabilities, subsequently corroborated by facts, will
be sufficient, as in the parallel case of other history, to
bring us safely to the matter, or at least to the organ, of
those revelations.
3.
Moreover, in subjects which belong to moral proof, such,
I mean, as history, antiquities, political science, ethics,
metaphysics, and theology, which are pre-eminently such,
and especially in theology and ethics, antecedent proba-
bility may have a real weight and cogency which it cannot
have in experimental science ; and a mature politician or
divine may have a power of reaching matters of fact in
consequence of his peculiar habits of mind, which is seldom
given in the same degree to physical inquirers, who, for
SECT. II.] STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. 113
the purposes of this particular pursuit, are very much on a
level. And this last remark at least is confirmed by Lord
Bacon, who confesses "Our method of discovering the
sciences does not much depend upon subtlety and strength
of genius, but lies level to almost every capacity and
understanding ;" * though surely sciences there are, in
which genius is everything, and rules all but nothing.
4.
It will be a great mistake then to suppose that, because
this eminent philosopher condemned presumption and pre-
scription in inquiries into facts which are external to us,
present with us, and common to us all, therefore authority,
tradition, verisimilitude, analogy, and the like, are mere
" idols of the den " or " of the theatre " in history or ethics.
Here we may oppose to him an author in his own line as
great as he is : " Experience," says Bacon, " is by far the
best demonstration, provided it dwell in the experiment; for
the transferring of it to other things judged alike is very
fallacious, unless done with great exactness and regular-
ity." 7 Mebuhr explains or corrects him : " Instances are
not arguments," he grants, when investigating an obscure
question of Roman history, — " instances are not arguments,
but in history are scarcely of less force ; above all, where
the parallel they exhibit is in the progressive development
of institutions." ' Here this sagacious writer recognizes
the true principle of historical logic, while he exemplifies it.
The same principle is involved in the well-known maxim
of Aristotle, that " it is much the same to admit the pro-
babilities of a mathematician, and to look for demonstration
from an orator." In all matters of human life, presump-
tion verified by instances, is our ordinary instrument of
proof, and, if the antecedent probability is great, it almost
6 Nov. Org. i. 2, § 26, vol. iv. p. 29. 7 Nov. Org. § 70, p. 44.
s Hist, of Rome, vol. i. p. 345, ed. 1828.
I
114 STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. [CH. IIT.
supersedes instances. Of course, as is plain, we may err
grievously in the antecedent view which, we start with, and
in that case, our conclusions may be wide of the truth ;
but that only shows that we had no right to assume a
premiss which was untrustworthy, not that our reasoning
was faulty.
5.
I am speaking of the process itself, and its correctness
is shown by its general adoption. In religious questions a
single text of Scripture is all-sufficient with most people,
whether the well disposed or the prejudiced, to prove a
doctrine or a duty in cases when a custom is established or a
tradition is strong. " Not forsaking the assembling of our-
selves together "is sufficient for establishing social, public,
nay, Sunday worship. " Where the tree falleth, there
shall it lie," shows that our probation ends with life. " For-
bidding to marry " determines the Pope to be the man of
sin. Again, it is plain that a man's after course for good
or bad brings out the passing words or obscure actions of
previous years. Then, on a retrospect, we use the event as
a presumptive interpretation of the past, of those past
indications of his character which, considered as evidence,
were too few and doubtful to bear insisting on at the time,
and would have seemed ridiculous, had we attempted to do
so. And the antecedent probability is even found to
triumph over contrary evidence, as well as to sustain what
agrees with it. Every one may know of cases in which a
plausible charge against an individual was borne down at
once by weight of character, though that character was in-
commensurate of course with the circumstances which gave
rise to suspicion, and had no direct neutralizing force to
destroy it. On the other hand, it is sometimes said, and
even if not literally true will serve in illustration, that not
a few of those who are put on trial in our criminal courts
are not legally guilty of the particular crime on which a
SECT. II.] STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. 115
verdict is found against them, being convicted not so
much upon the particular evidence, as on the presumption
arising from their want of character and the memory of
their former offences. Nor is it in slight matters only or
unimportant that we thus act. Our dearest interests, our
personal welfare, our property, our health, our reputation,
we freely hazard, not on proof, but on a simple probability,
which is sufficient for our conviction, because prudence
dictates to us so to take it. We must be content to follow
the law of our being in religious matters as well as in
secular.
6.
But there is more to say on the subordinate position which
direct evidence holds among the motiva of conviction in
most matters. It is no paradox to say that there is
a certain scantiness, nay an absence of evidence, which
may even tell in favour of statements which require to be
made good. There are indeed cases in which we cannot
discover the law of silence or deficiency, which are then
simply unaccountable. Thus Lucian, for whatever reason,
hardly notices Roman authors or affairs.9 Maximus
Tyrius, who wrote several of his works at Rome, neverthe-
less makes no reference to Roman history. Paterculus,
the historian, is mentioned by no ancient writer except
Priscian. What is more to our present purpose, Seneca,
Pliny the elder, and Plutarch are altogether silent about
Christianity ; and perhaps Epictetus also, and the Em-
peror Marcus. The Jewish Mishna, too, compiled about
A.D. 180, is silent about Christianity ; and the Jerusalem
and Babylonish Talmuds almost so, though the one was
compiled about A.D. 300, and the other A.D. 500. l Euse-
bius again, is very uncertain in his notice of facts : he does
not speak of St. Methodius, nor of St. Anthony, nor of the
martyrdom of St. Perpetua, nor of the miraculous powers of
9 Lardner's Heath. Test. p. 22. * Paley's Evid. p. i. prop. 1, 7.
i 2
116 STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. [CH. IIT.
St. Gregory Thaumaturgus ; and lie mentions Constantino's
luminous cross, not in his Ecclesiastical History, where it
would naturally find a place, but in his Life of the Emperor.
Moreover, those who receive that wonderful occurrence,
which is, as one who rejects it allows,2 " so inexplicable
to the historical inquirer," have to explain the difficulty
of the universal silence on the subject of all the Fathers
of the fourth and fifth centuries, excepting Eusebius.
In like manner, Scripture has its unexplained omis-
sions. No religious school finds its own tenets and usages
on the surface of it. The remark applies also to the very
context of Scripture, as in the obscurity which hangs
over Nathanael or the Magdalen. It is a remarkable
circumstance that there is no direct intimation all through
Scripture that the Serpent mentioned in the temptation of
Eve was the evil spirit, till we come to the vision of the
Woman and Child, and their adversary, the Dragon, in the
twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse.
7.
Omissions, thus absolute and singular, when they occur
in the evidence of facts or doctrines, are of course difficul-
ties ; on the other hand, not unfrequently they admit of
explanation. Silence may arise from the very notoriety
of the facts in question, as in the case of the seasons, the
weather, or other natural phenomena ; or from their
sacredness, as the Athenians would not mention the mytho-
logical Furies ; or from external constraint, as the omis-
sion of the statues of Brutus and Cassius in the procession.
Or it may proceed from fear or disgust, as on the arrival
of unwelcome news ; or from indignation, or hatred, or
contempt, or perplexity, as Josephus is silent about Chris-
tianity, and Eusebius passes over the death of Crispus in
his life of Constantine ; or from other strong feeling, as
2 Milman, Christ, vol. ii. p. 352.
SECT. II.] STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. 117
implied in the poet's sentiment, " Give sorrow words ;"
or from policy or other prudential motive, or propriety, as
Queen's Speeches do not mention individuals, however
influential in the political world, and newspapers after a
time were silent about the cholera. Or, again, from the
natural and gradual course which the fact took, as in the
instance of inventions and discoveries, the history of which
is on this account often obscure ; or from loss of docu-
ments or other direct testimonies, as we should not look
for theological information in a treatise on geology.
8.
Again, it frequently happens that omissions proceed on
some law, as the varying influence of an external cause ;
and then, so far from being a perplexity, they may even
confirm such evidence as occurs, by becoming, as it were, its
correlative. For instance, an obstacle may be assignable,
person, or principle, or accident, which ought, if it exists,
to reduce or distort the indications of a fact to that
very point, or in that very direction, or with the varia-
tions, or in the order and succession, which do occur in its
actual history. At first sight it might be a suspicious
circumstance that but one or two manuscripts of some
celebrated document were forthcoming ; but if it were
known that the sovereign power had exerted itself to sup-
press and destroy it at the time of its publication, and
that the extant manuscripts were found just in those places
where history witnessed to the failure of the attempt, the
coincidence would be highly corroborative of that evidence
which alone remained.
Thus it is possible to have too much evidence ; that is,
evidence so full or exact as to throw suspicion over the
case for which it is adduced. The genuine Epistles of St.
Ignatius contain none of those ecclesiastical terms, such as
" Priest " or " See," which are so frequent afterwards ;
118 STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. [CH. III.
and they quote Scripture sparingly. The interpolated
Epistles quote it largely ; that is, they are too Scriptural
to be Apostolic. Few persons, again, who are acquainted
with the primitive theology, but will be sceptical at first
reading of the authenticity of such works as the longer
Creed of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, or St. Hippolytus
contra Beronem, from the precision of the theological lan-
guage, which is unsuitable to the Antenicene period.
9.
The influence of circumstances upon the expression of
opinion or testimony supplies another form of the same
law of omission. "I am ready to admit/' says Paley,
" that the ancient Christian advocates did not insist upon
the miracles in argument so frequently as I should have
done. It was their lot to contend with notions of magical
agency, against which the mere production of the facts
was not sufficient for the convincing of their adversaries ;
I do not know whether they themselves thought it quite
decisive of the controversy. But since it is proved, I
conceive with certain ty, that the sparingness with which
they appealed to miracles was owing neither to their
ignorance nor their doubt of the facts, it is at any rate an
objection, not to the truth of the history, but to the judg-
ment of its defenders/'3 And, in like manner, Christians
were not likely to entertain the question of the abstract
allowableness of images in the Catholic ritual, with the
actual. superstitions and immoralities of paganism before
their eyes. JSTor were they likely to determine the place
of the Blessed Mary in our reverence, before they had
duly secured, in the affections of the faithful, the supreme
glory and worship of God Incarnate, her Eternal Lord
and Son. Nor would they recognize Purgatory as a part
of the Dispensation, till the world had flowed into the
8 Evidences, iii. 5.
SECT. II.] STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. 119
Church, and a habit of corruption had been superinduced,.
Nor could ecclesiastical liberty be asserted, till it had
been assailed. Nor would a Pope arise, but in proportion
as the Church was consolidated. Nor would monachism
be needed, while martyrdoms were in progress. Nor
could St. Clement give judgment on the doctrine of
Berengarius, nor St. Dionysius refute the Ubiquists, nor
St. Irensous denounce the Protestant view of Justification,
nor St. Cyprian draw up a theory of persecution. There
is "a time for every purpose under the heaven ;" "a time
to keep silence and a time to speak."
10.
Sometimes when the want of evidence for a series of
facts or doctrines is unaccountable, an unexpected explana-
tion or addition in the course of time is found as regards
a portion of them, which suggests a ground of patience as
regards the historical obscurity of the rest. Two instances
are obvious to mention, of an accidental silence of clear
primitive testimony as to important doctrines, and its
removal. In the number of the articles of Catholic belief
which the Reformation especially resisted, were the Mass
and the sacramental virtue of Ecclesiastical Unity. Since
the date of that movement, the shorter Epistles of
St. Ignatius have been discovered, and the early Liturgies
verified ; and this with most men has put an end to the
controversy about those doctrines. The good fortune which
has happened to them, may happen to others ; and though
it does not, yet that it has happened to them, is to those
others a sort of compensation for the obscurity in which
their early history continues to be involved.
11.
I may seem in these remarks to be preparing the way
120 STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. [CH. III.
for a broad admission of the absence of any sanction in
primitive Christianity in behalf of its medieval form, but
I do not make them with this intention. Not from mis-
givings of this kind, but from the claims of a sound logic,
I think it right to insist, that, whatever early testimonies I
may bring in support of later developments of doctrine, are
in great measure brought ex abundanti, a matter of grace,
not of compulsion. The onus probandi is with those who
assail a teaching which is, and has long been, in possession.
As for positive evidence in our behalf, they must take what
they can get, if they cannot get as much as they might
wish, inasmuch as antecedent probabilities, as I have said,
go so very far towards dispensing with it. It is a first
strong point that, in an idea such as Christianity, develop-
ments cannot but be, and those surely divine, because it is
divine; a second that, if so, they are those very ones which
exist, because there are no others ; and a third point is the
fact that they are found just there, where true develop-
ments ought to be found, — namely, in the historic seats of
Apostolical teaching and in the authoritative homes of
immemorial tradition.
12.
And, if it be said in reply that the difficulty of admitting
these developments of doctrine lies, not merely in the ab-
sence of early testimony for them, but in the actual existence
of distinct testimony against them, — or, as Chillingworth
says, in" Popes against Popes, Councils against Councils," —
I answer, of course this will be said ; but let the fact of
this objection be carefully examined, and its value reduced
to its true measure, before it is used in argument. I grant
that there are ' ' Bishops against Bishops in Church history,
Fathers against Fathers, Fathers against themselves," for
such differences in individual writers are consistent with,
or rather are involved in the very idea of doctrinal develop-
SECT. II.] STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. 121
ment, and consequently are no real objection to it ; the one
essential question is whether the recognized organ of
teaching, the Church herself, acting through Pope or
Council as the oracle of heaven, has ever contradicted
her own enunciations. If so, the hypothesis which I am
advocating is at once shattered ; but, till I have positive
and distinct evidence of the fact, I am slow to give
credence to the existence of so great an improbability.
CHAPTER IV.
INSTANCES IN ILLUSTKATION.
IT follows now to inquire how much evidence is actually
producible for those large portions of the present Creed of ,
Christendom, which have not a recognized place in the
primordial idea and the historical outline of the Religion,
yet which come to us with certain antecedent considerations
strong enough in reason to raise the effectiveness of that
evidence to a point disproportionate, as I have allowed, to
its intrinsic value. In urging these considerations here, of
course I exclude for the time the force of the Church's
claim of infallibility in her acts, for which so much can be
said, but I do not exclude the logical cogency of those
acts, considered as testimonies to the faith of the times
before them.
My argument then is this : — that, from the first age of
Christianity, its teaching looked towards those ecclesiastical
dogmas, afterwards recognized and defined, with (as time
went on) more or less determinate advance in their
direction ; till at length that advance became so pronounced,
as to justify their definition and to bring it about, and to
place them in the position of rightful interpretations and
keys of the remains and the records in history of the
teaching which had so terminated.
2.
This line of argument is not unlike that which is
considered to constitute a sufficient proof of truths in
CH. IV. SECT. I.] INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. 123
physical science. An instance of this is furnished us in a
work on Mechanics of the past generation, by a writer of
name, and his explanation of it will serve as an introduction
to our immediate subject. After treating of the laws
of motion he goes on to observe, "These laws are the
simplest principles to which motion can be reduced, and
upon them the whole theory depends. They are not
indeed self-evident, nor do they admit of accurate proof by
experiment, on account of the great nicety required in
adjusting the instruments and making the experiments ;
and on account of the effects of friction, and the air's
resistance, which cannot entirely be removed. They are,
however, constantly, and invariably, suggested to our
senses, and they agree with experiment as far as experiment
can go ; and the more accurately the experiments are made,
and the greater care we take to remove all those impedi-
ments which tend to render the conclusions erroneous, the
more nearly do the experiments coincide with these laws." l
And thus a converging evidence in favour of certain
doctrines may, under circumstances, be as clear a proof of
their Apostolical origin as can be reached practically from
the Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus.
In such a method of proof there is, first, an imperfect,
secondly, a growing evidence, thirdly, in consequence a
delayed inference and judgment, fourthly, reasons pro-
ducible to account for the delay.
SECTION I.
INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED.
1.
Canon of the New Testament.
As regards the New Testament, Catholics and Protestants
1 Wood's Mechanics, p. 31.
124 INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. [CH. IV.
receive the same books as canonical and inspired ; yet
among those books some are to be found, which certainly
have no right there if we follow the rule of Yincentius,
and receive nothing as of divine authority but what has
been received always and everywhere. The degrees of
evidence are very various for one book and another. " It is
confessed," says Less, " that not all the Scriptures of our
New Testament have been received with universal consent
as genuine works of the Evangelists and Apostles. But
that man must have predetermined to oppose the most
palpable truths, and must reject all history, who will not
confess that the greater part of the New Testament has been
universally received as authentic, and that the remaining
books have been acknowledged as such by the majority of
the ancients." 2
2.
For instance, as to the Epistle of St. James. It is true,
it is contained in the old Syriac version in the second
century ; but Origen, in the third century, is the first
writer who distinctly mentions it among the G reeks ; and
it is not quoted by name by any Latin till the fourth.
St. Jerome speaks of its gaining credit " by degrees, in
process of time." Eusebius says no more than that it had
been, up to his time, acknowledged by the majority ; and
he classes it with the Shepherd of St. Hermas and the
Epistle of St. Barnabas.3
Again : ' * The Epistle to the Hebrews, though received
in the East, was not received in the Latin Churches till
St. Jerome's time. St. Irenaeus either does not affirm, or
denies that it is St. .Paul's. Tertullian ascribes it to
St. Barnabas. Caius excludes it from his list. St. Hip-
polytus does not receive it. St. Cyprian is silent about it.
It is doubtful whether St. Optatus received it." 4
2 Authent. N. T. Tr. p. 237. 8 According to Less.
4 Tracts for the Times, No. 85, p. 78 [Discuss, iii. 6, p. 207].
SECT. I.] INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. 125
Again, St. Jerome tells us, that in his day, towards A.D.
400, the Greek Church rejected the Apocalypse, but the
Latin received it.
Again : " The New Testament consists of twenty-seven
books in all, though of varying importance. Of these,
fourteen are not mentioned at all till from eighty to one
hundred years after St. John's death, in which number
are the Acts, the Second to the Corinthians, the Galatians,
the Colossians, the Two to the Thessalonians, and St. James.
Of the other thirteen, five, viz. St. John's Gospel, the
Philippians, the First to Timothy, the Hebrews, and the
First of St. John are quoted but by one writer during the
same period. " 5
3,
On what ground, then, do we receive the Canon as it
comes to us, but on the authority of the Church of the
fourth and fifth centuries? The Church at that era
decided, — not merely bore testimony, but passed a judg-
ment on former testimony, — decided, that certain books
were of authority. And on what ground did she so
decide ? on the ground that hitherto a decision had been
impossible, in an age of persecution, from want of oppor-
tunities, for research, discussion, and testimony, from the
private or the local character of some of the books, and from
misapprehension of the doctrine contained in others. Now,
however, facilities were at length given for deciding
once for all on what had been in suspense and doubt for
three centuries. On this subject I will quote another
passage from the same Tract : " We depend upon the fourth
and fifth centuries thus : — As to Scripture, former centuries
do not speak distinctly, frequently, or unanimously, except
of some chief books, as the Gospels ; but we see in them,
as we believe, an ever-growing tendency and approximation
s Ibid. p. 80.
126 INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. [CH. IV.
to that full agreement which we find in the fifth. The
testimony given at the latter date is the limit to which
all that has been before said converges. For instance, it
is commonly said, Exceptio probat regulam ; when we have
reason to think that a writer or an age would have witnessed
so and so, but for this or that, and that this or that were
mere accidents of his position, then he or it may be said
to tend towards such testimony. In this way the first
centuries tend towards the fifth. Viewing the matter as
one of moral evidence, we seem to see in the testimony of
the fifth the very testimony which every preceding century
gave, accidents excepted, such as the present loss of docu-
ments once extant, or the then existing misconceptions
which want of intercourse between the Churches occasioned.
The fifth century acts as a comment on the obscure text
of the centuries before it, and brings out a meaning, which
with the help of the comment any candid person sees
really to be theirs." 6
4.
Original Sin.
I have already remarked upon the historical fact, that
the recognition of Original Sin, considered as the con-
sequence of Adam's fall, was, both as regards general
acceptance and accurate understanding, a gradual process,
not completed till the time of Augustine and Pelagius.
St. Chrysostom lived close up to that date, but there are
passages in his works, often quoted, which we should not
expect to find worded as they stand, if they had been
written fifty years later. It is commonly, and reasonably,
said in explanation, that the fatalism, so prevalent' in
various shapes pagan and heretical, in the first centuries,
was an obstacle to an accurate apprehension of the con-
sequences of the fall, as the presence of the existing
« No. 85 [Discuss, p. 236].
SECT. I.] INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. 127
idolatry was to the use of images. If this be so, we have
here an instance of a doctrine held back for a time by
circumstances, yet in the event forcing its way into its
normal shape, and at length authoritatively fixed in it,
that is, of a doctrine held implicitly, then developing, and
at length fully developed.
5.
Infant Baptism.
One of the passages of St. ChrysOstom to which I might
refer is this, "We baptize infants, though they are
not denied with sin, that they may receive sanctity,
righteousness, adoption, heirship, brotherhood with Christ,
and may become His members." (Aug. contr. Jul. i. 21).
This at least shows that he had a clear view of the impor-
tance and duty of infant baptism, but such was not the case
even with saints in the generation immediately before him.
As is well known, it was not unusual in that age of the
Church for those, who might be considered catechumens,
to delay their baptism, as Christians now delay reception
of the Holy Eucharist. It is difficult for us at this day to
enter into the assemblage of motives which led to this
postponement ; to a keen sense and awe of the special
privileges of baptism which could only once be received,
other reasons would be added, — reluctance to being com-
mitted to a strict rule of life, and to making a public pro-
fession of religion, and to joining in a specially intimate
fellowship or solidarity with strangers. But so it was in
matter of fact, for reasons good or bad, that infant baptism,
which is a fundamental rule of Christian duty with us,
was less earnestly insisted on in early times.
6.
Even in the fourth century St. Gregory Nazianzen,
St. Basil, and St. Augustine, having Christian mothers,
128 INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. [CH. IV.
still were not baptized till they were adults. St. Gregory's
mother dedicated him. to God immediately on his birth ;
and again when he had come to years of discretion,
with the rite of taking the gospels into his hands by way
of consecration. He was religiously-minded from his
youth, and had devoted himself to a single life. Yet his
baptism did not take place till after he had attended the
schools of Caesarea, Palestine, and Alexandria, and was on
his voyage to Athens. He had embarked during the
November gales, and for twenty days his life was in danger.
He presented himself for baptism as soon as he got to land.
St. Basil was the son of Christian confessors on both
father's and mother's side. His grandmother Macrina,
'who brought him up, had for seven years lived with her
husband in the woods of Pontus during the Decian perse-
cution. His father was said to have wrought miracles ;
his mother, an orphan of great personal beauty, was forced
from her unprotected state to abandon the hope of a single
life, and was conspicuous in matrimony for her care of
strangers and the poor, and for her offerings to the
churches. How religiously she brought up her children
is shown by the singular blessing, that four out of ten
have since been canonized as Saints. St. Basil was one of
these ; yet the child of such parents was not baptized till
he had come to man's estate, — till, according to the
Benedictine Editor, his twenty-first, and perhaps his
twenty-ninth, year. St. Augustine's mother, who is her-
self a Saint, was a Christian when he was born, though
his father was not. Immediately on his birth, he was
made a catechumen ; in his childhood he fell ill, and asked
for baptism. His mother was alarmed, and was taking
measures for his reception into the Church, when he
suddenly got better, and it was deferred. He did not
receive baptism till the age of thirty-three, after he had
been for nine years a victim of Manichaean error. In like
SECT. I.] INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. 129
manner, St. Ambrose, though brought up by his mother
and holy nuns, one of them his own sister St. Marcellina,
was not baptized till he was chosen bishop at the age of
about thirty-four, nor his brother St. Satyrus till about
the same age, after the serious warning of a shipwreck.
St. Jerome too, though educated at Rome, and so far under
religious influences, as, with other boys, to be in the
observance of Sunday, and of devotions in the catacombs,
had no friend to bring him to baptism, till he had reached
man's estate and had travelled.
7.
Now how are the modern sects, which protest against
infant baptism, to be answered by Anglicans with this
array of great names in their favour ? By the later rule
of the Church surely ; by the dicta of some later Saints,
as by St. Chrysostom ; by one or two inferences from
Scripture ; by an argument founded on the absolute neces-
sity of Baptism for salvation, — sufficient reasons certainly,
but impotent to reverse the fact that neither in Dalmatia
nor in Cappadocia, neither in Rome, nor in Africa, was it
then imperative on Christian parents, as it is now, to give
baptism to their young children. It was on retrospect and
after truths had sunk into the Christian mind, that the
authority of such men as St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, and
St. Augustine brought round the orbis terrarum to the
conclusion, which the infallible Church confirmed, that
observance of the rite was th'e rule, and the non-observance
the exception.
8.
Communion in one kind.
In the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Council
of Constance pronounced that, " though in the primitive
130 INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. [CH. IV.
Church the Sacrament " of the Eucharist " was received
by the faithful under, each kind, yet the custom has been
reasonably introduced, for the avoiding of certain dangers
and scandals, that it should be received by the consecrators
under each kind, and by the laity only under the kind of
Bread ; since it is most firmly to be believed, and in no
wise doubted, that the whole Body and Blood of Christ is
truly contained as well under the kind of Bread as under
the kind of Wine."
Now the question is, whether the doctrine here laid
down, and carried into effect in the usage here sanctioned,
was entertained by the early Church, and may be con-
sidered a just development of its principles and practices.
I answer that, starting with the presumption that the
Council has ecclesiastical authority, which is the point here
to be assumed, we shall find quite enough for its defence,
and shall be satisfied to decide in the affirmative ; we shall
readily come to the conclusion that Communion under
either kind is lawful, each kind conveying the full gift of
the Sacrament.
For instance, Scripture affords us two instances of what
may reasonably be considered the administration of the
form of Bread without that of Wine ; viz. our Lord's
own example towards the two disciples at Emmaus, and
St. Paul's action at sea during the tempest. Moreover,
St. Luke speaks of the first Christians as continuing in the
Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and "in breaking of
bread, and in prayer," not mentioning the Cup.
And again, in the sixth chapter of St. John, our Lord
says absolutely, " He that eateth Me, even he shall live by
Me/' And, though He distinctly promises that we shall
have it granted to us to drink His blood, as well as to
eat His flesh ; nevertheless, not a word does He say to
signify that, as He is the Bread from heaven and the
living Bread, so He is the heavenly, living Wine also.
SECT. 1.] INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. 131
Again, St. Paul says that " whosoever shall eat this Bread
or drink this Cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty
of the Body and Blood of the Lord."
Many of the types of the Holy Eucharist, as far as they
go, tend to the same conclusion ; as the Manna, to which our
Lord referred, the Paschal Lamb, the Shewbread, the
sacrifices from which the blood was poured out, and the
miracle of the loaves, which are figures of the bread alone ;
while the water from the rock, and the Blood from our
Lord's side correspond to the Wine without the Bread.
Others are representations of both kinds ; as Melchizedek's
feast, and Elijah's miracle of the meal and oil.
9.
And, further, it certainly was the custom in the early
Church, under circumstances, to communicate in one kind,
as we learn from St. Cyprian, St. Dionysius, St. Basil, St.
Jerome, and others. For instance, St. Cyprian speaks of
the communion of an infant under Wine, and of a woman
under Bread; and St. Ambrose speaks of his brother in ship-
wreck folding the consecrated Bread in a handkerchief, and
placing it round his neck ; and the monks and hermits in
the desert can hardly be supposed to have been ordinarily
in possession of consecrated Wine as well as Bread.
From the following Letter of St. Basil, it appears that, not
only the monks, but the whole laity of Egypt ordinarily
communicated in Bread only. He seems to have been
asked by his correspondent, whether in time of persecution
it was lawful, in the absence of priest or deacon, to take
the communion " in our own hand" that is, of course, the
Bread ; he answers that it may be justified by the follow-
ing parallel cases, in mentioning which he is altogether
silent about the Cup. " It is plainly no fault," he says,
" for long custom supplies instances enough to sanction it.
For all the monks in the desert, where there is no priest,
K 2
132 INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. [CH. IV.
keep the communion at home, and partake it from them-
selves. In Alexandria too, and in Egypt, each of the laity,
for the most part, has the Communion in his house, and,
when he will, he partakes it by means of himself. For
when once the priest has celebrated the Sacrifice and
given it, he who takes it as a whole together, and then
partakes of it daily, reasonably ought to think that he
partakes and receives from him who has given it." 7 It
should be added, that in the beginning of the Letter he
may be interpreted to speak of communion in both kinds,
and to say that it is " good and profitable."
Here we have the usage of Pontus, Egypt, Africa, and
Milan. Spain may be added, if a late author is right in
his view of the meaning of a Spanish Canon ;8 and Syria,
as well as Egypt, at least at a later date, since Nicephorus 9
tells us that the Acephali, having no Bishops, kept the
.Bread which their last priests had consecrated, and dis-
pensed crumbs of it every year at Easter for the purposes
of Communion.
10.
But it may be said, that after all it is so very
hazardous and fearful a measure actually to withdraw
7 Ep. 93. I have thought it best to give an over-literal translation.
8 Vid. Concil. Bracar. ap. Aguirr. Cone. Hisp. t. ii. p. 676. " That the
cup was not administered at the same time is not so clear ; but from the
tenor of this first Canon in the Acts of the Third Council of Braga, which
condemns the notion that the Host should be steeped in the chalice, we
have no doubt that the wine was withheld from the laity. Whether cer-
tain points of doctrine are or' are not found in the Scriptures is no concern
of the historian ; all that he has to do is religiously to follow his guides, to
suppress or distrust nothing through partiality." — Dunham, Hist, of Spain
and Port. vol. i. p. 204. If pro complemento communionis in the Canon
merely means " for the Cup/' at least the Cup is spoken of as a complement ;
the same view is contained in the "confirmation of the Eucharist," as
spoken of in St. German's Life. Vid. Lives of Saints, No. 9, p. 28.
9 Niceph. Hist, xviii. 45. Renaudot, however, tells us of two Bishops at
the time when the schism was at length healed. Patr. Al. Jac. p. 248.
However, these had been consecrated by priests, p. 145.
SECT. I.] INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. 133
from Christians one-half of the Sacrament, that, in spite
of these precedents, some direct warrant is needed to re-
concile the mind to it. There might have been circum-
stances which led St. Cyprian, or St. Basil, or the Apos-
tolical Christians before them to curtail it, about which
we know nothing. It is not therefore safe in us, because
it was safe in them. Certainly a warrant is necessary ;
and just such a warrant is the authority of the Church.
If we can trust her implicitly, there is nothing in the state
of the evidence to form an objection to her decision in this
instance, and in proportion as we find we can trust her
does our difficulty lessen. Moreover, children, not to say
infants, were at one time admitted to the Eucharist, at
least to the Cup ; on what authority are they now excluded
from Cup and Bread also ? St. Augustine considered the
usage to be of Apostolical origin ; and it continued in
the West down to the twelfth century ; it continues in
the East among Greeks, Husso- Greeks, and the various
Monophysite Churches to this day, and that on the
ground of its almost universality in the primitive Church.1
Is it a greater innovation to suspend the Cup, than to
cut off children from Communion altogether ? Yet we
acquiesce in the latter deprivation without a scruple. It
is safer to acquiesce with, than without, an authority ;
safer with the belief that the Church is the pillar and
ground of the truth, than with the belief that in so great
a matter she is likely to err.
11.
The Homousion.
The next instance I shall take is from the early teaching
on the subject of our Lord's Consubstantiality and Co-
eternity.
1 Vid. Bing. Ant. xv. 4, § 7 ; and Fleury, Hist. xxvi. 50, note g.
134 INSTANCES CURSORILY NOTICED. [CH. IV.
In the controversy carried on by various learned men
in the seventeenth and following century, concerning the
statements of the early Fathers on this subject, the one
party determined the patristic theology by the literal force
of the separate expressions or phrases used in it, or by the
philosophical opinions of the day ; the other, by the doc-
trine of the Catholic Church, as afterwards authoritatively
declared. The one party argued that those Fathers need
not have meant more than what was afterwards considered
heresy ; the other answered that there is nothing to prevent
their meaning more. Thus the position which Bull main-
tains seems to be nothing beyond this, that the Nicene
Creed is a natural key for interpreting the body of Ante-
nicene theology. His very aim is to explain difficulties ;
now the notion of difficulties and their explanation im-
plies a rule to which they are apparent exceptions, and in
accordance with which they are to be explained. Nay,
the title of his work, which is a " Defence of the Creed of
Nicsea," shows that he is not investigating what is true and
what false, but explaining and justifying a foregone con-
clusion, as sanctioned by the testimony of the great Coun-
cil. Unless the statements of the Fathers had suggested
difficulties, his work would have had no object. He allows
that their language is not such as they would have used
after the Creed had been imposed ; but he says in effect
that, if we will but take it in our hands and apply it
equitably to their writings, we shall bring out and har-
monize their teaching, clear their ambiguities, and discover
their anomalous statements to be few and insignificant.
In other words, he begins with a presumption, and shows
how naturally facts close round it and fall in with it, if we
will but let them. He does this triumphantly, yet he
has an arduous work ; out of about thirty writers whom
he reviews, he has, for one cause or other, to " explain
piously " nearly twenty.
SECT, ii.] OUR LORD'S INCARNATION, ETC. 135
SECTION II.
OUR LORD'S INCARNATION AND THE DIGNITY OF HIS BLESSED
MOTHER AND OF ALL SAINTS.
Bishop Bull's controversy had regard to Ante-nicene
writers only, and to little more than to the doctrine of the
Divine Son's consubstantiality and co-eternity ; and, as
being controversy, it necessarily narrows and dries up a
large and fertile subject. Let us see whether, treated
historically, it will not present itself to us in various aspects
which may rightly be called developments, as coming into
view, one out of another, and following one after another
by a natural order of succession.
2.
First then, that the language of the Ante-nicene Fathers,
on the subject of our Lord's Divinity, may be far more
easily accommodated to the Arian hypothesis than can the
language of the Post-nicene, is agreed on all hands. Thus
St. Justin speaks of the Son as subservient to the Father in
the creation of the world, as seen by Abraham, as speaking
to Moses from the bush, as appearing to Joshua before the
fall of Jericho,2 as Minister and Angel, and as numerically
distinct from the Father. Clement, again, speaks of the
Word3 as the " Instrument of God," " close to the Sole
Almighty ; " " ministering to the Omnipotent Father's
will ;"4 " an energy, so to say, or operation of the Father,"
and " constituted by His will as the cause of all good." 6
Again, the Council of Antioch, which condemned Paul
of Samosata, says that He " appears to the Patriarchs
and converses with them, being testified sometimes to be
an Angel, at other times Lord, at others God;" that,
while " it is impious to think that the God of all is called
2 Kaye's Justin, p. 59, &c. 3 Kaye's Clement, p. 335.
4 p. 341. s ib. 342.
136 OUR LORD'S INCARNATION AND THE [CH. iv.
an Angel, the Son is the Angel of the Father." 6 Formal
proof, however, is unnecessary ; had not the fact been as
I have stated it, neither Sandius would have professed
to differ from the Post-nicene Fathers, nor would Bull
have had to defend the Ante-nicene.
3.
One principal change which took place, as time went on,
was the following : the Ante-nicene Fathers, as in some of
the foregoing extracts, speak of the Angelic visions in the
Old Testament as if they were appearances of the Son ; but
St. Augustine introduced the explicit doctrine, which has
been received since his date, that they were simply Angels,
through whom the Omnipresent Son manifested Himself.
This indeed is the only interpretation which the Ante-
nicene statements admitted, as soon as reason began to
examine what they did mean. They could not mean that
the Eternal God could really be seen by bodily eyes ; if
anything was seen, that must have been some created glory
or other symbol, by which it pleased the Almighty to
signify His Presence. What was heard was a sound, as
external to His Essence, and as distinct from His Nature,
as the thunder or the voice of the trumpet, which pealed
along Mount Sinai ; what it was had not come under dis-
cussion till St. Augustine ; both question and answer were
alike undeveloped. The earlier Fathers spoke as if there
were no medium interposed between the Creator and the
creature, and so they seemed to make the Eternal Son
the medium ; what it really was, they had not deter-
mined. St. Augustine ruled, and his ruling has been
accepted in later times, that it was not a mere atmospheric
phenomenon, or an impression on the senses, but the
material form proper to an Angelic presence, or the pre-
sence of an Angel in that material garb in which blessed
6 Reliqu. Sacr. t. ii. p. 469, 470.
SECT, II.] DIGNITY OF HIS MOTHER AND ALL SAINTS. 137
Spirits do ordinarily appear to men. Henceforth the Angel
in the bush, the voice which spoke with Abraham, and the
man who wrestled with Jacob, were not regarded as the
Son of God, but as Angelic ministers, whom He employed,
and through whom He signified His presence and His will.
Thus the tendency of the controversy with the Arians was
to raise our view of our Lord's Mediatorial acts, to impress
them on us in their divine rather than their human aspect,
and to associate them more intimately with the ineffable
glories which surround the Throne of God. The Mediator-
ship was no longer regarded in itself, in that prominently
subordinate place which it had once occupied in the thoughts
of Christians, but as an office assumed by One, who though
having become man in order to bear it, was still God.7
Works and attributes, which had hitherto been assigned
to the Economy or to the Sonship, were now simply
assigned to the Manhood. A tendency was also elicited*
as the controversy proceeded, to contemplate our Lord
more distinctly in His absolute perfections, than in His
relation to the First Person of the Blessed Trinity. Thus,
whereas the Nicene Creed speaks of the "Father Almighty,"
and " His Only-begotten Son, our Lord, God from God,
Light from Light, Yery God from Yery God," and of the
Holy Ghost, " the Lord and Giver of Life," we are told in
the Athanasian of " the Father Eternal, the Son Eternal,
and the Holy Ghost Eternal," and that " none is afore or
after other, none is greater or less than another/''
4.
The Apollinarian and Monophysite controversy, which
followed in the course of the next century, tended towards
a development in the same direction. Since the heresies,
which were in question, maintained, at least virtually,
' [This subject is more exactly and carefully treated in Tracts Theol. and
Eccles. pp. 146—180.]
138 OUR LORD'S INCARNATION AND THE [CH. iv.
that our Lord was not man, it was obvious to insist on the
passages of Scripture which describe His created and sub-
servient nature, and this had the immediate effect of inter-
preting of His manhood texts which had hitherto been
understood more commonly of His Divine Sonship. Thus,
for instance, " My Father is greater than I," which had been
understood even by St. Athanasius of our Lord as God,
is applied by later writers more commonly to His humanity;
and in this way the doctrine of His subordination to the
Eternal Father, which formed so prominent a feature in
Ante-nicene theology, comparatively fell into the shade.
5.
And coincident with these changes, a most remarkable
result is discovered. The Catholic polemic, in view of the
Arian and Monophysite errors, being of this character,
became the natural introduction to the cultus Sanctorum ;
for in proportion as texts descriptive of created mediation
ceased to belong to our Lord, so was a room opened for
created mediators. Nay, as regards the instance of An-
gelic appearances itself, as St. Augustine explained them,
if those appearances were creatures, certainly creatures
were worshipped by the Patriarchs, not indeed in them-
selves,8 but as the token of a Presence greater than them-
selves. When " Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to
look upon God," he hid his face before a creature ; when
Jacob said, " I have seen God face to face and my life is
preserved," the Son of God was there, but what he saw,
what he wrestled with, was an Angel. When " Joshua
fell on his face to the earth and did worship before the
captain of the Lord's host, and said unto him, What saith
my Lord unto his servant ?" what was seen and heard was
8 [They also had a cultus in themselves, and specially when a greater
Presence did not overshadow them. Vid. Via Media, vol. ii. art. iv. 9,
p. 104, note.]
SECT. II.] DIGNITY OF HIS MOTHER AND ALL SAINTS. 139
a glorified creature, if St. Augustine is to be followed ; and
the Son of God was in him.
And there were plain precedents in the Old Testament
for the lawfulness of such adoration. When " the people
saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle-door," '* all
the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent-
door." When Daniel too saw " a certain man clothed in
linen " " there remained no strength " in him, for his
" comeliness was turned " in him " into corruption." He
fell down on his face, and next remained on his knees and
hands, and at length " stood trembling," and said " 0 my
Lord, by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me, and
I have retained no strength. For how can the servant of
this my Lord talk with this my Lord ? " It might be
objected perhaps to this argument, that a worship which
was allowable in an elementary system might be unlawful
when " grace and truth " had come " through Jesus
Christ ; " but then it might be retorted surely, that that
elementary system had been emphatically opposed to all
idolatry , and had been minutely jealous of everything
which might approach to favouring it. Nay, the very
prominence given in the Pentateuch to the doctrine of a
Creator, and the comparative silence concerning the An-
gelic creation, and the prominence given to the Angelic
creation in the later Prophets, taken together, were a token
both of that jealousy, and of its cessation, as time went on.
Nor can anything be concluded from St. Paul's censure of
Angel worship, since tne sin which he is denouncing was
that of " not holding the Head/' and of worshipping crea-
tures instead of the Creator as the source of good. The
same explanation avails for passages like those in St.
Athanasius and Theodoret, in which the worship of Angels
is discountenanced.
9 Exod. xxxiii. 10. A Dan. x. 5—17.
140 OUR LORD'S INCARNATION AND THE [CH. iv.
6.
The Arian controversy had led to another development,
which confirmed by anticipation the cultus to which St.
Augustine's doctrine pointed. In answer to the objection
urged against our Lord's supreme Divinity from texts
which speak of His exaltation, St. Athanasius is led to
insist forcibly on the benefits which have accrued to man
through it. He says that, in truth, not Christ, but that
human nature which He had assumed, was raised and
glorified in Him. The more plausible was the heretical
argument against His Divinity from those texts, the more
emphatic is St. Athanasius's exaltation of our regenerate
nature by way of explaining them. But intimate indeed
must be the connexion between Christ and His brethren,
and high their glory, if the language which seemed to
belong to the Incarnate Word really belonged to them.
Thus the pressure of the controversy elicited and developed
a truth, which till then was held indeed by Christians, but
less perfectly realized and not publicly recognized. The
sanctification, or rather the deification of the nature of
man, is one main subject of St. Athanasius's theology.
Christ, in rising, raises His Saints with Him to the right
hand of power. They become instinct with His life, of
one body with His flesh, divine sons, immortal kings, gods.
He is in them, because He is in human nature ; and He
communicates to them that nature, deified by becoming
His, that them It may deify. He is in them by the
Presence of His Spirit, and in them is He seen. They
have those titles of honour by participation, which are
properly His. Without misgiving we may apply to them
the most sacred language of Psalmists and Prophets.
" Thou art a Priest for ever " may be said of St. Poly carp
or St. Martin as well as of their Lord. " He hath dis-
persed abroad, he hath given to the poor/' was fulfilled in
SECT. II.] DIGNITY OF HIS MOTHER AND ALL SAINTS. 141
St. Laurence. " I have found David My servant," first
said typically of the King of Israel, and belonging really to
Christ, is transferred back again by grace to His Vicegerents
upon earth. "I have given thee the nations for thine
inheritance" is the prerogative of Popes ; " Thou hast given
him his heart's desire," the record of a martyr ; " thou
hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity/' the praise of
Yirgins.
7.
"As Christ/' says St. Athanasius, "died, and was
exalted as man, so, as man, is He said to take what, as
God, He ever had, in order that even this so high a grant
of grace might reach to us. For the Word did not suffer
loss in receiving a body, that He should seek to receive a
grace, but rather He deified that which He put on, nay,
gave it graciously to the race of man. . . . For it is the
Father's glory, that man made and then lost should be
found again ; and, when done to death, that he should be
made alive, and should become God's temple. For whereas
the powers in heaven, both Angels and Archangels, were
ever worshipping the Lord, as they are now too worshipping
Him in the Name of Jesus, this is our grace and high
exaltation, that, even when he became man, the Son of
God is worshipped, and the heaventy powers are not
startled at seeing all of us, who are of one body with Him,
introduced into their realms.-"2 In this passage it is
almost said that the glorified Saints will partake in the
homage paid by Angels to Christ, the True Object of all
worship ; and at least a reason is suggested to us by it for
the Angel's shrinking in the Apocalypse from the homage
of St. John, the Theologian and Prophet of the Church.3
But St. Athanasius proceeds still more explicitly, " In that
the Lord, even when come in human body and called Jesus,
s A than. Orat. i. 42, Oxf. tr. s [Tid. stcpr. p. 138, note 8.]
142 OUR LORD'S INCARNATION AND THE [CH. iv.
was worshipped and believed to be God's Son, and that
through Him the Father is known, it is plain, as has been
said, that, not the Word, considered as the Word, received
this so great grace, but we. For, because of our relation-
ship to His Body, we too have become God's temple, and
in consequence have been made God's sons, so that even in
us the Lord is now worshipped, and beholders report, as the
Apostle says, that * God is in them of a truth.' " 4 It
appears to be distinctly stated in this passage, that those
who are formally recognized as God's adopted sons in Christ,
are fit objects of worship on account of Him who is in them ;
a doctrine which both interprets and accounts for the
invocation of Saints, the cultus of relics, and the religious
veneration in which even the living have sometimes been
held, who, being saintly, were distinguished by miraculous
gifts.5 Worship then is the necessary correlative of glory;
and in the same sense in which created natures can share
in the Creator's incommunicable glory, are they also
allowed a share of that worship which is His property
alone.
8.
There was one other subject on which the Arian
controversy had a more intimate, though not an immediate
influence. Its tendency to give a new interpretation to
the texts which speak of our Lord's subordination, has
already been noticed ; such as admitted of it were hence-
forth explained more prominently of His manhood than of
His Mediatorship or His Sonship. But there were other
texts which did not admit of this interpretation, and which,
without ceasing to belong to Him, might seem more directly
4 Athan. ibid.
5 And so Eusebius, in his Life of Constantine : " The all-holy choir of
God's perpetual virgins, he was used almost to worship (o-e'jSwf), believing
that that God, to whom they had consecrated themselves, was an inhabitant
in the souls of such/' Vit. Const, iv. 28.
SECT. IT.] DIGNITY OF HIS MOTHER AND ALL SAINTS. 143
applicable to a creature than to the Creator. He indeed
was really the " Wisdom in whom the Father eternally
delighted,'"' yet it would be but natural, if, under the
circumstances of Arian misbelief, theologians looked out
for other than the Eternal Son to be the immediate object
of such descriptions. And thus the controversy opened a
question which it did not settle. It discovered a new
sphere, if we may so speak, in the realms of light, to which
the Church had not yet assigned its inhabitant. Arianism
had admitted that our Lord was both the God of the
Evangelical Covenant,, and the actual Creator of the
Universe ; but even this was not enough, because it did
not confess Him to be the One, Everlasting, Infinite,
Supreme Being, but as one who was made by the Supreme.
It was not enough in accordance with that heresy to
proclaim Him as having an ineffable origin before all
worlds ; not enough to place Him high above all creatures
as the type of all the works of God's Hands ; not enough
to make Him the King of all Saints, the Intercessor for man
with God, the Object of worship, the Image of the Father ;
not enough, because it was not all, and between all and
anything short of all, there was an infinite interval. The
highest of creatures is levelled with the lowest in comparison
of the One Creator Himself. That is, the Nicene Council
recognized the eventful principle, that, while we believe and
profess any being to subsist in a created nature, such a being
is really no God to us, though honoured by us with whatever
high titles and with- whatever homage. Arius or
Asterius did all but confess that Christ was the Almighty ;
they said much more than St. Bernard or St. Alphonso
have since said of the Blessed Mary ; yet they left Him a
creature and were found wanting. Thus there was " a
wonder in heaven:" a throne was seen, far above all
created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title archetypal ;
a crown bright as the morning star ; a glory issuing from
144 OUR LORD'S INCARNATION AND THE [CH. iv.
the Eternal Throne ; robes pure as the heavens ; and a
sceptre over all; and who was the predestined heir of
that Majesty ? Since it was not high enough for the
Highest, who was that Wisdom, and what was her name,
"the Mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope/'
"exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and a rose-plant in
Jericho/' " created from the beginning before the world "
in God's counsels, and " in Jerusalem was her power " ?
The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed
with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her
head a crown of twelve stars. The votaries of Mary do not
exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son
came up to it. The Church of Rome is not idolatrous,
unless Arianism is orthodoxy.
9.
' I am not stating conclusions which were drawn out in
the controversy, but of premisses which were laid, broad
and deep. It was then shown, it was then determined,
that to exalt a creature was no recognition of its divinity.
Nor am I speaking of the Semi-Arians, who, holding our
Lord's derivation from the Substance of the Father, yet
denying His Consubstantiality, really did lie open to the
charge of maintaining two Gods, and present no parallel
to the defenders of the prerogatives of St. Mary. But I
speak of the Arians who taught that the Son's Substance
was created ; and concerning them it is true that
St. Athanasius's condemnation of their theology is a
vindication of the Medieval. Yet it is not wonderful,
considering how Socinians, Sabellians, Nestorians, and the
like, abound in these days, without their even knowing it
themselves, if those who never rise higher in their notions
of our Lord's Divinity, than to consider Him a man
singularly inhabited by a Divine Presence, that is, a
SECT. II.] DIGNITY OF HIS MOTHER AND ALL SAINTS. 145
Catholic Saint, — if such men should mistake the honour
paid by the Church to the human Mother for that very
honour which, and which alone, is worthy of her Eternal
Son.
10.
I have said that there was in the first ages no public and
ecclesiastical recognition of the place which St. Mary holds
in the Economy of grace ; this was reserved for the fifth
century _, as the definition of our Lord's proper Divinity had
heen the work of the fourth. There was a controversy
contemporary with those already mentioned, I mean the
Nestorian, which brought out the complement of the
development, to which they had been subservient ; and
which, if I may so speak, supplied the subject of that
august proposition of which Arianism had provided the
predicate. In order to do honour to Christ, in order to
defend the true doctrine of the Incarnation, in order to
secure a right faith in the manhood of the Eternal Son,
the Council of Ephesus determined the Blessed Virgin to
be the Mother of God. Thus all heresies of that day,
though opposite to each other, tended in a most wonderful
way to her exaltation ; and the School of Antioch, the
fountain of primitive rationalism, led the Church to deter-
mine first the conceivable greatness of a creature, and then
the incommunicable dignity of the Blessed Virgin.
11.
But the spontaneous or traditional feeling of Christians
had in great measure anticipated the formal ecclesiastical
decision. Thus the title Theotocos, or Mother of God, was
familiar to Christians from primitive times, and is used,
among other writers, by Origen, Eusebius, St. Alexander
St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory Nazianzen,
St. Gregory Nyssen, and St. Nilus. She had been called
146 OUR LORD'S INCARNATION AND THE [CH. iv.
Ever- Virgin by Sc. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, Didymus, and
others. By others, " the Mother of all living/' as being
the antitype of Eve; for, as St. Epiphanius observes, "in
truth," not in shadow, " from Mary was Life itself brought
into the world, that Mary might bear things living, and
might become Mother of living things." 6 St. Augustine
says that all have sinned " except the Holy Yirgin Mary,
concerning whom, for the honour of the Lord, I wish no
question to be raised at all, when we are treating of sins."
' ' She was alone and wrought the world's salvation," says
St. Ambrose, alluding to her conception of the Redeemer.
She is signified by the Pillar of the cloud which guided the
Israelites, according to the same Father ; and she had "so
great grace, as not only to have virginity herself, but to
impart it to those to whom she came ;" — " the Rod out of
the stem of Jesse," says St. Jerome, and " the Eastern gate
through which the High Priest alone goes in and out, yet
is ever shut ;" — the wise woman, says St. Nilus, who "hath
clad all believers, from the fleece of the Lamb born of
her, with the clothing of incorruption, and delivered them
from their spiritual nakedness ;" — " the Mother of Life,
of beauty, of majesty, the Morning Star," according to
Antiochus ; — "the mystical new heavens," "the heavens
carrying the Divinity/' " the fruitful vine by whom we
are translated from death unto life," according to
St. Ephraim ; " the manna which is delicate, bright, sweet,
and virgin, which, as though coming from heaven, has
poured down on all the people of the Churches a food
pleasanter than honey," according to St. Maximus.
St. Proclus calls her " the unsullied shell which contains
the pearl of price," "the sacred shrine of sinlessness," "the
golden altar of holocaust," " the holy oil of anointing,"
" the costly alabaster box of spikenard," " the ark gilt
within and without/' " the heifer whose ashes, that is, the
6 Hger. 78, 18.
SECT. II.] DIGNITY OF HIS MOTHER AND ALL SAINTS. 147
Lord's Body taken from her, cleanses those who are defiled
by the pollution of sin," " the fair bride of the Canticles,"
"the stay (a-njp^a) of believers," "the Church's diadem,"
" the expression of orthodoxy." These are oratorical
expressions ; but we use oratory on great subjects, not on
small. Elsewhere he calls her " God's only bridge to man;"
and elsewhere he breaks forth, " Run through all creation
in your thoughts, and see if there be equal to, or greater
than, the Holy Virgin Mother of God."
12.
Theodotus too, one of the Fathers of Ephesus, or whoever
it is whose Homilies are given to St. Amphilochius : — " As
debtors and God's well-affected servants, let us make con-
fession to God the Word and to His Mother, of the gift of
words, as far as we are able. . . Hail, Mother, clad in light, of
the light which sets not; hail all-undefiled mother of
holiness ; hail most pellucid fountain of the life-giving
stream ! " After speaking of the Incarnation, he con-
tinues, " Such paradoxes doth the Divine Virgin Mother
ever bring to us in her holy irradiations, for with her is
the Fount of Life, and breasts of the spiritual and guile-
less milk ; from which to suck the sweetness, we have even
now earnestly run to her, not as in forgetfulness of what
has gone before, but in desire of what is to come."
To St. Fulgentius is ascribed the following : " Mary
became the window of heaven, for through her God poured
the True Light upon the world ; the heavenly ladder, for
through her did God descend upon earth Come,
ye virgins, to a Virgin, come ye who conceive to one who
did conceive, ye who bear to one who bore, mothers to a
Mother, ye who give suck to one who suckled, young
women to the Young." Lastly, " Thou hast found grace,"
says St. Peter Chrysologus, " how much ? he had said
L 2
148 PAPAL SUPREMACY. [CH. IV.
above, Full. And full indeed, which with full shower
might pour upon and into the whole creation." 7
Such was the state of sentiment on the subject of the
Blessed Virgin, which the Arian, Nestorian, and Mono-
physite heresies found in the Church ; and on which the
doctrinal decisions consequent upon them impressed a form
and a consistency which has been handed on in the East
and West to this day.
SECTION III.
THE PAPAL SUPREMACY.
7. I will take one instance more. Let us see how, on
the principles which I have been laying down and defend-
ing, the evidence lies for the Pope's Supremacy.
As to this doctrine the question is this, whether there
was not from the first a certain element at work, or in
existence, divinely sanctioned, which, for certain reasons
did not at once show itself upon the surface of ecclesiastical
7 Aug. de Nat. et Grat. 42. Ambros. Ep. 1, 49, § 2. In Psalm 118,
v. 3. de Instit. Virg. 50. Hier. in Is. xi. 1, contr. Pelag. ii. 4. Nil. Ep. i.
p. 267. Antiocb. ap Cyr. de Rect. Fid. p. 49. Ephr. Opp. Syr. t. 3, p. 607.
Max. Horn. 45. Procl. Orat. vi. pp. 225—228, p. 60, p. 179, 180, ed. 1630.
Theodot. ap. Ampbiloch. pp. 39, &c. Fulgent. Serm. 3, p. 125. Cbrysol.
Serm. 142. A striking passage from another Sermon of tbe last-mentioned
author, on tbe words " She cast in her mind what manner of salutation/' &c.,
may be added: "Quantus sit Deus satis ignorat ille, qui hujus Virginis
mentem non stupet, animum non miratur. Pavet coelum, tremunt Angeli,
creatura non sustinet, natura non sufficit ; et una puella sic Deum in sui
pectoris capit, recipit, oblectat bospitio, ut pacem terris, coelis gloriam,
salutem perditis, vitam mortuis, terrenis eurn coelestibus parentelam, ipsius
Dei cum carne commercium, pro ipsa domus exigat pensione, pro ipsius
uteri mercede conquirat," &c. Serm. 140. [St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and
St. Cyril of Alexandria sometimes speak, it is true, in a different tone ; on
this subject vid. " Letter to Dr. Pusey," Diff. of Angl. vol. 2, p. 128.]
SECT. III.] PAPAL SUPREMACY. 149
affairs, and of which events in the fourth century are the
development ; and whether the evidence of its existence
and operation, which does occur in the earlier centuries,
be it much or little, is not just such as ought to occur upon
such an hypothesis.
2.
For instance, it is true, St. Ignatius is silent in his
Epistles on the subject of the Pope's authority ; but if that
authority was not, and could not be, in active operation
then, such silence is not so difficult to account for as the
silence of Seneca or Plutarch about Christianity itself, or
of Lucian about the Roman people. St. Ignatius directed
his doctrine according to the need. While Apostles were on
earth, there was the display neither of Bishop nor Pope ;
their power had no prominence, as being exercised by
Apostles. In course of time, first the power of the Bishop
displayed itself, and then the power of the Pope. When
the Apostles were taken away, Christianity did not at once
break into portions ; yet separate localities might begin to
be the scene of internal dissensions, and a local arbiter in
consequence would be wanted. Christians at home did
not yet quarrel with Christians abroad ; they quarrelled at
home among themselves. St. Ignatius applied the fitting
remedy. The Sacrament um Unitatis was acknowledged on
all hands ; the mode of fulfilling and the means of securing
it would vary with the occasion ; and the determination of
its essence, its seat, and its laws would be a gradual supply
for a gradual necessity.
3.
This is but natural, and is parallel to instances which
happen daily, and may be so considered without prejudice to
the divine right whether of the Episcopate or of the Papacy.
It is a common occurrence for a quarrel and a lawsuit to
150 PAPAL SUPREMACY. [CH. IV.
bring out the state of the law, and the most unexpected
results often follow. St. Peter's prerogative would remain
a mere letter, till the complication of ecclesiastical matters
became the cause of ascertaining it. While Christians were
" of one heart and one soul/' it would be suspended ; love
dispenses with laws. Christians knew that they must live
in unity, and they were in unity ; in what that unity con-
sisted, how far they could proceed, as it were, in bending
it, and what at length was the point at which it broke,
was an irrelevant as well as unwelcome inquiry. Relatives
often live together in happy ignorance of their respective
rights and properties, till a father or a husband dies ; and
then they find themselves against their will in separate
interests, and on divergent courses, and dare not move
without legal advisers. Again, the case is conceivable of a
corporation or an Academical body, going on for centuries
in the performance of the routine-business which came in its
way, and preserving a good understanding between its mem-
bers, with statutes almost a dead letter and no precedents to
explain them, and the rights of its various classes and
functions undefined, — then of its being suddenly thrown
back by the force of circumstances upon the question of
its formal character as a body politic, and in consequence
developing in the relation of governors and governed.
The regalia Petri might sleep, as the power of a Chancellor
has slept ; not as an obsolete, for they never had been carried
into eifect, but as a mysterious privilege, which was not
understood ; as an unfulfilled prophecy. For St. Ignatius
to speak of Popes, when it was a matter of Bishops, would
have been like sending an army to arrest a housebreaker.
The Bishop's power indeed was from God, and the Pope^s
could be no more ; he, as well as the Pope, was our Lord's
representative, and had a sacramental office : but I am
speaking, not of the intrinsic sanctity or divinity of such
an office, but of its duties.
SECT. III.] PAPAL SUPREMACY. 151
4.
When the Church, then, was thrown upon her own
resources, first local disturbances gave exercise to Bishops,
and next ecumenical disturbances gave exercise to Popes ;
and whether communion with the Pope was necessary for
Catholicity would not and could not be debated till a sus-
pension of that communion had actually occurred. It is
not a greater difficulty that St. Ignatius does not write to
the Asian Greeks about Popes, than that St. Paul does not
write to the Corinthians about Bishops. And it is a less
difficulty that the Papal supremacy was not formally
acknowledged in the second century, than that there was
no formal acknowledgment on the part of the Church of
the doctrine of the Holy Trinity till the fourth. No doc-
trine is defined till it is violated.
And, in like manner, it was natural for Christians to
direct their course in matters of doctrine by the guidance
of mere floating, and, as it were, endemic tradition, while
it was fresh and strong ; but in proportion as it languished,
or was broken in particular places, did it become necessary
to fall back upon its special homes, first the Apostolic Sees,
and then the See of St. Peter.
5.
Moreover, an international bond and a common authority
could not be consolidated, were it ever so certainly pro-
vided, while persecutions lasted. If the Imperial Power
checked the development of Councils, it availed also for
keeping back the power of the Papacy. The Creed, the
Canon, in like manner, both remained undefined. The
Creed, the Canon, the Papacy, Ecumenical Councils, all
began to form, as soon as the Empire relaxed its tyrannous
oppression of the Church. And as it was natural that her
monarchical power should display itself when the Empire
became Christian, so was it natural also that further
152 PAPAL SUPREMACY. [CH. IV.
developments of that power should take place when that
Empire fell. Moreover, when the power of the Holy See
began to exert itself, disturbance and collision would be
the necessary consequence. Of the Temple of Solomon, it
was said that " neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of
iron was heard in the house, while it was in building."
This is a type of the Church above ; it was otherwise with
the Church below, whether in the instance of Popes or
Apostles. In either case, a new power had to be defined ;
as St. Paul had to plead, nay, to strive for his apostolic
authority, and enjoined St. Timothy, as Bishop of Ephesus,
to let no man despise him : so Popes too have not there-
fore been ambitious because they did not establish their
authority without a struggle. It was natural that Poly-
crates should oppose St. Victor ; and natural too that St.
Cyprian should both extol the See of St. Peter, yet resist
it when he thought it went beyond its province. And at
a later day it was natural that Emperors should rise in
indignation against it ; and natural, on the other hand,
that it should take higher ground with a younger power
than it had taken with an elder and time-honoured.
6.
We may follow Barrow here without reluctance, except
in his imputation of motives.
"In the first times," he says, "while the Emperors
were pagans, their [the Popes'] pretences were suited to
their condition, and could not soar high ; they were not
then so mad as to pretend to any temporal power, and a
pittance of spiritual eminency did content them."
Again : " The state of the most primitive Church did
not well admit such an universal sovereignty. For that
did consist of small bodies incoherently situated, and scat-
tered about in very distant places, and consequently unfit
to be modelled into one political society, or to be governed
SECT. III.] PAPAL SUPREMACY. 153
by one head, especially considering their condition under
persecution and poverty. "What convenient resort for
direction or justice could a few distressed Christians in
Egypt, Ethiopia, Parthia, India, Mesopotamia, Syria,
Armenia, Cappadocia, and other parts, have to Rome ! "
Again : " Whereas no point avowed by Christians could
be so apt to raise offence and jealousy in pagans against
our religion as this, which setteth up a power of so vast
extent and huge influence ; whereas no novelty could be
more surprising or startling than the creation of an
universal empire over the consciences and religious practices
of men; whereas also this doctrine could not be but very
conspicuous and glaring in ordinary practice, it is pro-
digious that all pagans should not loudly exclaim against
it," that is, on the supposition that the Papal power really
was then in actual exercise.
And again : " It is most prodigious that, in the disputes
managed by the Fathers against heretics, the Gnostics,
Valentinians, &c., they should not, even in the first place,
allege and urge the sentence of the universal pastor and
judge, as a most evidently conclusive argument, as the
most efficacious and compendious method of convincing and
silencing them/'
Once more : " Even Popes themselves have shifted their
pretences, and varied in style, according to the different
circumstances of time, and their variety of humours,
designs, interests. In time of prosperity, and upon advan-
tage, when they might safely do it, any Pope almost would
talk high and assume much to himself; but when they were
low, or stood in fear of powerful contradiction, even the
boldest Popes would speak submissively or moderately."
On the whole, supposing the power to be divinely
bestowed, yet in the first instance more or less dormant,, a
history could not be traced out more probable, more suitable
8 Pope's Suprem. ed. 1836, pp. 26, 27, 157, 171, 222.
154 PAPAL SUPREMACY. [CH. IV.
to that hypothesis, than the actual course of the con-
troversy which took place age after age upon the Papal
supremacy.
7.
It will be said that all this is a theory. Certainly it is :
it is a theory to account for facts as they lie in the history,
to account for so much being told us about the Papal
authority in early times, and not more ; a theory to recon-
cile what is and what is not recorded about it ; and, which
is the principal point, a theory to connect the words and
acts of the Ante-nicene Church with that antecedent pro-
bability of a monarchical principle in the Divine Scheme,
and that actual exemplification of it in the fourth century,
which forms their presumptive interpretation. All depends
on the strength of that presumption. Supposing there be
otherwise good reaspn for saying that the Papal Supremacy
is part of Christianity, there is nothing in the early history
of the Church to contradict it.
8.
It follows to inquire in what this presumption consists ?
It has, as I have said two parts, the antecedent probability
of a Popedom, and the actual state of the Post-nicene
Church. The former of these reasons has unavoidably
been touched upon in what has preceded. It is the
absolute need of a monarchical power in the Church which
is our ground for anticipating it. Apolitical body cannot
exist without government, and the larger is the body the
more concentrated must the government be. If the whole
of Christendom is to form one Kingdom, one head is
essential ; at least this is the experience of eighteen hun-
dred years. As the Church grew into form, so did the
power of the Pope develope ; and wherever the Pope has
been renounced, decay and division have been the conse-
quence. We know of no other way of preserving the
SECT. TIT.] PAPAL SUPREMACY. 155
Sacramentum Unitatis, but a centre of unity. The Nesto-
rians have had their " Catholicus ; " the Lutherans of
Prussia have their general superintendent ; even the
Independents, I believe, have had an overseer in their
Missions. The English Church affords an observable
illustration of this doctrine. As her prospects have opened
and her communion extended, the See of Canterbury has
become the natural centre of her operations. It has at
the present time jurisdiction in the Mediterranean, at
Jerusalem, in Hindostan, in North America, at the Anti-
podes. It has been the organ of communication, when a
Prime Minister would force the Church to a redistribution
of her property, or a Protestant Sovereign abroad would
bring her into friendly relations with his own communion.
Eyes have been lifted up thither in times of perplexity ;
thither have addresses been directed and deputations sent.
Thence issue the legal decisions, or the declarations in Par-
liament, or the letters, or the private interpositions, which
shape the fortunes of the Church, and are the moving
influence within her separate dioceses. It must be so ;
no Church can do without its Pope. We see before
our eyes the centralizing process by which the See of St.
Peter became the Sovereign Head of Christendom.
If such be the nature of the case, it is impossible, if we
may so speak reverently, that an Infinite Wisdom, which
sees the end from the beginning, in decreeing the rise of
an universal Empire, should not have decreed the develop-
ment of a sovereign ruler.
Moreover, all this must be viewed in the light of the
general probability, so much insisted on above, that doctrine
cannot but develope as time proceeds and need arises, and
that its developments are parts of the Divine system, and
that therefore it is lawful, or rather necessary, to interpret
the words and deeds of the earlier Church by the deter-
minate teaching of the later.
156 PAPAL SUPREMACY. [CH. IV.
9.
And, on the other hand, as the counterpart of these
anticipations, we are met by certain announcements in
Scripture, more or less obscure and needing a comment,
and claimed by the Papal See as having their fulfilment
in itself. Such are the words, " Thou art Peter, and upon
this rock I will build My Church ; and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it, and I will give unto Thee the
Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven." Again : " Feed My
lambs, feed My sheep." And " Satan hath desired to have
you ; I have prayed for thee, and when thou art converted,
strengthen thy brethren." Such, too, are various other
indications of the Divine purpose as regards St. Peter,
too weak in themselves to be insisted on separately, but
not without a confirmatory power; such as his new
name, his walking on the sea, his miraculous draught
of fishes on two occasions, our Lord's preaching out of
his boat, and His appearing first to him after His resur-
rection.
It should be observed, moreover, that a similar promise
was made by the patriarch Jacob to Judah : " Thou art he
whom thy brethren shall praise : the sceptre shall not
depart from Judah till Shiloh come ; " yet this promise
was not fulfilled for perhaps eight hundred years, during
which long period we hear little or nothing of the tribe
descended from him. In like manner, " On this rock I
will build My Church," l( I give unto thee the Keys," "Feed
My sheep," are not precepts merely, but prophecies and
promises, promises to be accomplished by Him who made
them, prophecies to be fulfilled according to the need, and
to be interpreted by the event, — by the history, that is, of
the fourth and fifth centuries, though they had a partial
fulfilment even in the preceding period, and a still more
noble development in the middle ages.
SECT. III.] PAPAL SUPREMACY. 157
10.
A partial fulfilment, or at least indications of what was
to be, there certainly were in the first age. Faint one by
one, at least they are various, and are found in writers of
many times and countries, and thereby illustrative of each
other, and forming a body of proof. Thus St. Clement, in
the name of the Church of Rome, writes to the Corinthians,
when they were without a bishop ; St. Ignatius of Antioch
addresses the Roman Church, out of the Churches to which
he writes, as " the Church, which has in dignity the first
seat, of the city of the Romans/'9 and implies that it
was too high for his directing as being the Church of St.
Peter and St. Paul. St. Polycarp of Smyrna has recourse to
the Bishop of Rome on the question of Easter ; the heretic
Marcion, excommunicated in Pontus, betakes himself to
Rome ; Soter, Bishop of Rome, sends alms, according to the
custom of his Church, to the Churches throughout the empire,
and, in the words of Eusebius," affectionately exhorted those
who came to Rome, as a father his children ;" the Mon-
tanists from Phrygia come to Rome to gain the countenance
of its Bishop ; Praxeas, from Asia, attempts the like, and
for a while is successful ; St. Victor, Bishop of Rome,
threatens to excommunicate the Asian Churches ; St.
Irenaeus speaks of Rome as " the greatest Church, the most
ancient, the most conspicuous and founded and established
by Peter and Paul," appeals to its tradition, not in contrast
indeed, but in preference to that of other Churches, and
declares that " to this Church, every Church, that is, the
faithful from every side must resort " or " agree with it?
propter potiorem principalUatem." " 0 Church, happy in its
position," says Tertullian, " into which the Apostles poured
out, together with their blood, their whole doctrine;" and
elsewhere, though in indignation and bitter mockery, he
calls the Pope "the Pontifex Maximus, the Bishop of
158 PAPAL SUPREMACY. [CH. IV.
Bishops/' The presbyters of St. Dionysius, Bishop of
Alexandria, complain of his doctrine to St. Dionysius of
Home ; the latter expostulates with him, and he explains.
The Emperor Aurelian leaves " to the Bishops of Italy and
of Rome " the decision, whether or not Paul of Samosata
shall be dispossessed of the see-house at Antioch ; St. Cyprian
speaks of Rome as "the See of Peter and the principal
Church, whence the unity of the priesthood took its rise, . .
whose faith has been commended by the Apostles, to whom
faithlessness can have no access ;" St. Stephen refuses to
receive St. Cyprian's deputation, and separates himself from
various Churches of the East ; Fortunatus and Felix,
deposed by St. Cyprian, have recourse to Rome ; Basilides,
deposed in Spain, betakes himself to Rome, and gains the
ear of St. Stephen.
11.
St. Cyprian had his quarrel with the Roman See, but it
appears he allows to it the title of the " Cathedra Petri,"
and even Firmilian is a witness that Rome claimed it. In
the fourth and fifth centuries this title and its logical results
became prominent. Thus St. Julius (A.D. 342) remonstrated
by letter with the Eusebian party for " proceeding on
their own authority as they pleased/' and then, as he says,
" desiring to obtain our concurrence in their decisions,
though we never condemned [Athanasius]. Not so have
the constitutions of Paul, not so have the traditions of the
Fathers directed ; this is another form of procedure, a novel
practice. . . For what we have received from the blessed
Apostle Peter, that I signify to you ; and I should not
have written this, as deeming that these things are manifest
unto all men, had not these proceedings so disturbed us."1
St. Athanasius, by preserving this protest, has given it his
sanction. Moreover, it is referred to by Socrates ; and his
account of it has the more force, because he happens to be
10 Athan. Hist. Tracts. Oxf. tr. p. 56.
SECT. III.] PAPAL SUPREMACY. 159
incorrect in the details, and therefore did not borrow it
from St. Athanasius : " Julius wrote back/5 he says, " that
they acted against the Canons, because they had not called
him to the Council, the Ecclesiastical Canon command-
ing that the Churches ought not to make Canons beside
the will of the Bishop of R/ome." And Sozomen : " It
was a sacerdotal law, to declare invalid whatever was
transacted beside the will of the Bishop of the Homans." 2
On the other hand, the heretics themselves, whom St.
Julius withstands, are obliged to acknowledge that Rome
was " the School of the Apostles and the Metropolis of
orthodoxy from the beginning ;" and two of their leaders
(Western Bishops indeeed) some years afterwards recanted
their heresy before the Pope in terms of humble confession.
12.
Another Pope, St. Damasus, in his letter addressed to
the Eastern Bishops against Apollinaris (A.D. 382), calls
those Bishops his sons. " In that your charity pays the
due reverence to the Apostolical See, ye profit yourselves
the most, most honoured sons. For if, placed as we are
in that Holy Church, in which the Holy Apostle sat and
taught, how it becometh us to direct the helm to which we
have succeeded, we nevertheless confess ourselves unequal
to that honour ; yet do we therefore study as we may, if
so be we may be able to attain to the glory of his blessed-
ness." : " I speak," says St. Jerome to the same St.
Damasus, " with the successor of the fisherman and the
disciple of the Cross. I, following no one as my chief but
Christ, am associated in communion with thy blessedness,
that is, with the See of Peter. I know that on that rock
the Church is built. Whosoever shall eat the Lamb out-
side this House is profane ; if a man be not in the Ark of
1 Hist. ii. 17. 2 Hist. iii. 10.
3 Theod. Hist. v. 10.
160 PAPAL SUPREMACY. [CH. IV.
Noe, he shall perish, when the flood comes in its power."
St. Basil entreats St. Damasus to send persons to arbitrate
between the Churches of Asia Minor, or at least to make
a report on the authors of their troubles, and name the party
with which the Pope should hold communion. "We are
in no wise asking anything new," he proceeds, " but what
was customary with blessed and religious men of former
times, and especially with yourself. For we know, by
tradition of our fathers of whom we have inquired, and
from the information of writings still preserved among us,
that Dionysius, that most blessed Bishop, while he was
eminent among you for orthodoxy and other virtues, sent
letters of visitation to our Church at Csesarea, and of con-
solation to our fathers, with ransomers of our brethren
from captivity." In like manner, Ambrosiaster, a Pelagian
in his doctrine, which is not to the purpose, speaks of the
" Church being God's house, whose ruler at this time is
Damasus."
13.
" "We bear/' says St. Siricius, another Pope (A.D. 385),
" the burden of all who are laden ; yea, rather the blessed
Apostle Peter beareth them in us, who, as we trust, in all
things protects and defends us the heirs of his govern-
ment." 6 And he in turn is confirmed by St. Optatus.
" You cannot deny your knowledge," says the latter to
Parmenian, the Donatist, " that, in the city Home, on
Peter first hath an Episcopal See been conferred, in which
Peter sat, the head of all the Apostles, ... in which one
See unity might be preserved by all, lest the other Apostles
should support their respective Sees ; in order that he
mio'ht be at once a schismatic and a sinner, who against
that one See (singularem) placed a second. Therefore that
4 Constant, Epp. Pont. p. 546. 5 In 1 Tim. iii. 14, 15.
6 Constant, p. 624.
SECT. III.] PAPAL SUPREMACY. 161
one See (unicam), which is the first .. of the Church's pre-
rogatives, Peter filled first ; to whom succeeded Linus ; to
Linus, Clement ; to Clement, &c., &c. ... to Damasus,
Siricius, who at this day is associated with us (socius),
together with whom the whole world is in accordance with
us, in the one bond of communion, by the intercourse of
letters of peace." 7
Another Pope : " Diligently and congruously do ye
consult the arcana of the Apostolical dignity/' says St.
Innocent to the Council of Mile vis (A.D. 417), " the dignity
of him on whom, beside those things which are without,
falls the care of all the Churches ; following the form of
the ancient rule, which you know, as well as I, has been
preserved always by the whole world." 8 Here the Pope
appeals, as it were, to the Rule of Yincentius ; while St.
Augustine bears witness that he did not outstep his prero-
gative, for, giving an account of this and another letter,
he says, " He [the Pope] answered us as to all these matters
as it was religious and becoming in the Bishop of the
Apostolic See." !
Another Pope : " We have especial anxiety about all
persons," says St. Celestine (A.D. 425), to the Illyrian
Bishops, " on whom, in the holy Apostle Peter, Christ
conferred the necessity of making all men our care, when
He gave him the Keys of opening and shutting." And St.
Prosper, his contemporary, confirms him, when he calls
Home " the seat of Peter, which, being made to the world
the head of pastoral honour, possesses by religion what it
does not possess by arms ;" and Yincent of Lerins, when
he calls the Pope " the head of the world." 1
14.
Another Pope : " Blessed Peter," says St. Leo (A.D.
440, &c.), "hath not deserted the helm of the Church
7 ii. 3. s Coustant, pp. 896, 1064.
9 Ep. 186, 2. i De Ingrat. 2. Common. 41.
M
162 PAPAL SUPREMACY. [CH. IV.
which he had assumed. . . His power lives and his
authority is pre-eminent in his See." 2 " That immove-
ableness, which, from the Rock Christ, he, when made
a rock, received, has been communicated also to his heirs."
And as St. Athanasius and the Eusebians, by their con-
temporary testimonies, confirm St. Julius ; and St. Jerome,
St. Basil, and Ambrosiaster, St. Damasus ; and St. Optatus,
St. Siricius ; and St. Augustine, St. Innocent ; and St.
Prosper and Yincent, St. Celestine ; so do St. Peter
Chrysologus, and the Council of Chalcedon confirm St.
Leo. " Blessed Peter," says Chrysologus, " who lives and
presides in his own See, supplies truth of faith to those
who seek it." 4 And the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon,
addressing St. Leo respecting Dioscorus, Bishop of Alex-
andria : " He extends his madness even against him to
whom the custody of the vineyard has been committed by
the Saviour, that is, against thy Apostolical holiness."
But the instance of St. Leo will occur again in a later
Chapter.
15.
The acts of the fourth century speak as strongly as its
words. We may content ourselves here with Barrow's
admissions : —
" The Pope's power," he says, " was much amplified by
the importunity of persons condemned or extruded from
their places, whether upon just accounts, or wrongfully,
and by faction ; for they, finding no other more hopeful
place of refuge and redress, did often apply to him : for
what will not men do, whither will not they go in straits?
Thus did Marcion go to Rome, and sue for admission to
communion there. So Fortunatus and Felicissimus in
St. Cyprian, being condemned in Afric, did fly to Rome
2 Serm. De Natal, iii. 3. 3 Ibid. v. 4.
4 Ep. ad Eutych. fin. 5 Concil. Hard. t. ii. p. 656.
SECT. III.] PAPAL SUPREMACY. 163
for shelter ; of which absurdity St, Cyprian doth so com-
plain. So likewise Martianus and Basilides in St. Cyprian,
being outed of their Sees for having lapsed from the
Christian profession, did fly to Stephen for succour, to be
restored. So Maximus, the Cynic, went to Rome, to get
a confirmation of his election at Constantinople. So Mar-
cellus, being rejected for heterodoxy, went thither to get
attestation to his orthodoxy, of which St. Basil complaineth.
So Apiarus, being condemned in Afric for his crimes, did
appeal to Rome. And, on the other side, Athanasius
being with great partiality condemned by the Synod of
Tyre ; Paulus and other bishops being extruded from, their
sees for orthodoxy ; St. Chrysostom being condemned and
expelled by Theophilus and his complices ; Flavianus
being deposed by Dioscorus and the Ephesine synod ;
Theodoret being condemned by the same, did cry out for
help to Rome. Chelidonius, Bishop of Besan9on, being
deposed by Hilarius of Aries for crime, did fly to Pope
Leo."
Again : " Our adversaries do oppose some instances of
popes meddling in the constitution of bishops ; as, Pope
Leo I. saith, that Anatolius did 'by the favour of his
assent obtain the bishopric of Constantinople/ The same
pope is alleged as having confirmed Maximus of Antioch.
The same doth write to the Bishop of Thessalonica, his
vicar, that he should ' confirm the elections of bishops by
his authority/ He also confirmed Donatus, an African
bishop :— * We will tha*t Donatus preside over the Lord's
flock, upon condition that he remember to send us an
account of his faith/ . . Pope Damasus did confirm the
ordination of Peter Alexandrinus."
16.
And again : " The Popes indeed in the fourth century
began to practise a fine trick, very serviceable to the
M 2
164 PAPAL SUPREMACY. [CH. IV.
enlargement of their power ; which was to confer on
certain bishops, as occasion served, or for continuance, the
title of their vicar or lieutenant, thereby pretending to
impart authority to them : whereby they were enabled for
performance of divers things, which otherwise by their
own episcopal or metropolitical power they could not
perform. By which device they did engage such bishops
to such a dependence on them, whereby they did promote
the papal authority in provinces, to the oppression of the
ancient rights and liberties of bishops and synods, doing
what they pleased under pretence of this vast power com-
municated to them ; and for fear of being displaced, or
out of affection to their favourer, doing what might serve
to advance the papacy. Thus did Pope Celestine con-
stitute Cyril in his room. Pope Leo appointed Anatolius
of Constantinople ; Pope Felix, Acacius of Constantinople.
.... Pope Simplicius to Zeno, Bishop of Seville : ' We
thought it convenient that you should be held up by the
vicariat authority of our see/ So did Siricius and his
successors constitute the bishops of Thessalonicato be their
vicars in the diocese of Illyricum, wherein being then a
member of the western empire they had caught a special
jurisdiction ; to which Pope Leo did refer in those words,
which sometimes are impertinently alleged with reference
to all bishops, but concern only Anastasius, Bishop of
Thessalonica : * We have entrusted thy charity to be in
our stead ; so that thou art called into part of the solicitude,
not into plenitude of the authority/ So did Pope Zosimus
bestow a like pretence of vicarious power upon the Bishop
of Aries, which city was the seat of the temporal exarch
in Gaul." 6
17.
More ample testimony for the Papal Supremacy, as now
6 Barrow on the Supremacy, ed. 1836, pp. 263, 331, 384.
SECT. III.] PAPAL SUPREMACY. 165
professed by Roman Catholics, is scarcely necessary than
what is contained in these passages ; the simple question
is, whether the clear light of the fourth and fifth centuries
may be fairly taken to interpret to us the dim, though
definite, outlines traced in the preceding.
PART II.
DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS
VIEWED RELATIVELY TO DOCTRINAL
CORRUPTIONS.
CHAPTER Y.
GENUINE DEVELOPMENTS] CONTRASTED WITH
CORRUPTIONS.
I HAVE been engaged in drawing out the positive and
direct argument in proof of the intimate connexion, or
rather oneness, with primitive Apostolic teaching, of the
body of doctrine known at this day by the name of Catholic,
and professed substantially both by Eastern and Western
Christendom. That faith is undeniably the historical
continuation of the religious system, which bore the name
of Catholic in the eighteenth century, in the seventeenth,
in the sixteenth, and so back in every preceding century,
till we arrive at the first ; — undeniably the successor, the
representative, the heir of the religion of Cyprian, Basil,
Ambrose and Augustine. The only question that can be
raised is whether the said Catholic faith, as now held, is
logically, as well as historically, the representative of the
ancient faith. This then is the subject, to which I have
as yet addressed myself, and I have maintained that
modern Catholicism is nothing else but simply the legiti-
mate growth and complement, that is the natural and
necessary development, of the doctrine of the early church,
and that its divine authority is included in the divinity of
Christianity.
2.
So far I have gone, but an important objection presents
itself for distinct consideration. It may be said in answer
170 GENUINE DEVELOPMENTS [CH. V.
to me that it is not enough that a certain large system of
doctrine, such as that which goes by the name of Catholic,
should admit of being referred to beliefs, opinions, and
usages which prevailed among the first Christians, in order
to my having a logical right to include a reception of the
later teaching in the reception of the earlier ; that an intel-
lectual development may be in one sense natural, and yet
untrue to its original, as diseases come of nature, yet are
the destruction, or rather the negation of health ; that the
causes which stimulate the growth of ideas may also disturb
and deform them ; and that Christianity might indeed have
been intended by its Divine Author for a wide expansion of
the ideas proper to it, and yet this great benefit hindered
by the evil birth of cognate errors which acted as its counter-
feit ; in a word, that what I have called developments in
the Roman Church are nothing more or less than what
used to be called her corruptions ; and that new names do
not destroy old grievances.
This is what may be said, and I acknowledge its force :
it becomes necessary in consequence to assign certain
characteristics of faithful developments, which none but
faithful developments have, and the presence of which
serves as a test to discriminate between them and corrup-
tions. This I at once proceed to do, and I shall begin by
determining what a corruption is, and why it cannot
rightly be called, and how it differs from, a development.
3.
To find then what a corruption or perversion of the truth
is, let us inquire what the word means, when used literally of
material substances. Now it is plain, first of all, that a
corruption is a word attaching to organized matters only ;
a stone may be crushed to powder, but it cannot be cor-
rupted. Corruption, on the contrary, is the breaking up of
life, preparatory to its termination. This resolution of a
SECT. I.] CONTRASTED WITH CORRUPTIONS. 171
body into its component parts is the stage before its disso-
lution ; it begins when life has reached its perfection, and
it is the sequel, or rather the continuation, of that process
towards perfection, being at the same time the reversal and
undoing of what went before. Till this point of regression
is reached, the body has a function of its own, and a direc-
tion and aim in its action, and a nature with laws ; these
it is now losing, and the traits and tokens of former years ;
and with them its vigour and powers of nutrition, of assimi-
lation, and of self-reparation.
4.
Taking this analogy as a guide, I venture to set down
seven Notes of varying cogency, independence and appli-
cability, to discriminate healthy developments of an idea
from its state of corruption and decay, as follows : — There
is no corruption if it retains one and the same type, the
same principles, the same organization ; if its beginnings
anticipate its subsequent phases, and its later phenomena
protect and subserve its earlier ; if it has a power of assimi-
lation and revival, and a vigorous action from first to last.
On these tests I shall now enlarge, nearly in the order in
which I have enumerated them.
. SECTION I.
FIRST NOTE OF A GENUINE DEVELOPMENT.
PRESERVATION OF TYPE.
This is readily suggested by the analogy of physical
growth, which is sucfi that the parts and proportions of
the developed form, however altered, correspond to those
which belong to its rudiments. The adult animal has the
172 FIRST NOTE OF A GENUINE DEVELOPMENT. [cH. V.
same make, as it had on its birth ; young birds do not
grow into fishes, nor does the child degenerate into the
brute, wild or domestic, of which he is by inheritance
lord. Vincentius of Lerins adopts this illustration in
distinct reference to Christian doctrine. " Let the soul's
religion," he says, " imitate the law of the body, which, as
years go on, developes indeed and opens out its due propor-
tions, and yet remains identically what it was. Small are
a baby's limbs, a youth's are larger, yet they are the
same." l
2.
In like manner every calling or office has its own type,
which those who fill it are bound to maintain ; and to deviate
from the type in any material point is to relinquish the
calling. Thus both Chaucer and Goldsmith have drawn
pictures of a true parish priest ; these differ in details, but
on the whole they agree together, and are one in such
sense, that sensuality, or ambition, must be considered a
forfeiture of that high title. Those magistrates, again, are
called " corrupt," who are guided in their judgments by
love of lucre or respect of persons, for the administration
of justice is their essential function. Thus collegiate or
monastic bodies lose their claim to their endowments or
their buildings, as being relaxed and degenerate, if they
neglect their statutes or their Rule. Thus, too, in political
history, a mayor of the palace, such as he became in the
person of Pepin, was no faithful development of the office
he filled, as originally intended and established.
3.
In like manner, it has been argued by a late writer,
whether fairly or not does not interfere with the illustra-
tion, that the miraculous vision and dream of the Labarum
1 Commonit. 29.
SECT. I.] PRESERVATION OF TYPE. 173
could not have really taken place, as reported by Eusebius,
because it is counter to the original type of Christianity.
" For the first time," he says, on occasion of Constantino's
introduction of the standard into his armies, " the meek
and peaceful Jesus became a God of battle, and the Cross,
the holy sign of Christian Redemption, a banner of bloody
strife This was the first advance to the military
Christianity of the middle ages, a modification of the pure
religion of the Gospel, if directly opposed to its genuine
principles, still apparently indispensable to the social
progress of men/"2
On the other hand, a popular leader may go through a
variety of professions, he may court parties and break
with them, he may contradict himself in words, and undo
his own measures, yet there may be a steady fulfilment of
certain objects, or adherence to certain plain doctrines,
which gives a unity to his career, and impresses on
beholders an image of directness and large consistency
which shows a fidelity to his type from first to last.
4.
However, as the last instances suggest to us, this unity
of type, characteristic as it is of faithful developments,
must not be pressed to the extent of denying all variation,
nay, considerable alteration of proportion and relation, as
time goes on, in the parts or aspects of an idea. Great
changes in outward appearance and internal harmony
occur in the instance of the animal creation itself. The
fledged bird differs much from its rudimental form in the
egg. The butterfly is the development, but not in any
sense the image, of the grub. The whale claims a place
among mammalia, though we might fancy that, as in the
child's game of catscradle, some strange introsusception
had been permitted, to make it so like, yet so contrary, to
2 Milman, Christ.
174 FIRST NOTE OF A GENUINE DEVELOPMENT. [CH. V.
the animals with, which it is itself classed. And, in like
manner, if beasts of prey were once in paradise, and fed
upon grass, they must have presented bodily phenomena
very different from the structure of muscles, claws, teeth,
and viscera which now fit them for a carnivorous existence.
Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, on his death-bed,
grasped his own hand and said, " I confess that in this
flesh we shall all rise again ;" yet flesh and blood cannot
inherit the kingdom of God, and a glorified body has
attributes incompatible with its present condition on
earth.
5.
More subtle still and mysterious are the variations
which are jconsistent or not inconsistent with identity in
political and religious developments. The Catholic doc-
trine of the Holy Trinity has ever been accused by here-
tics of interfering with that of the Divine Unity out of
which it grew, and even believers will at first sight con-
sider that it tends to obscure it. Yet Petavius says, "'I
will affirm, what perhaps will surprise the reader, that that
distinction of Persons which, in regard to proprieties is in
reality most great, is so far from disparaging the Unity
and Simplicity of God that this very real distinction
especially avails for the doctrine that God is One and
most Simple."3
Again, Arius asserted that the Second Person of the
Blessed Trinity was not able to comprehend the First,
whereas Eunomius's characteristic tenet was in an
opposite direction, viz. that not only the Son, but that all
men could comprehend God ; yet no one can doubt that
Eunomianism was a true development, not a corruption of
Arianism.
The same man may run through various philosophies
a De Deo, ii. 4, § 8.
SECT. I.] PRESERVATION OF TYPE. 175
or beliefs, which are in themselves irreconcilable, without
inconsistency, since in him they may be nothing more
than accidental instruments or expressions of what he is
inwardly from first to last. The political doctrines of the
modern Tory resemble those of the primitive Whig ; yet
few will deny that the Whig and Tory characters have
each a discriminating type. Calvinism has changed into
Unitarianism : yet this need not be called a corruption,
even if it be not, strictly speaking, a development ; for
Harding, in controversy writh Jewell, surmised the coming
change three centuries since, and it has occurred not in one
country, but in many.
6.
The history of national character supplies an analogy,
rather than an instance strictly in point ; yet there is so
close a connexion between the development of minds and
of ideas that it is allowable to refer to it here. Thus we
find England of old the most loyal supporter, and England
of late the most jealous enemy, of the Holy See. As
great a change is exhibited in France, once the eldest
born of the Church and the flower of her knighthood, now
democratic and lately infidel. Yet, in neither nation,
can these great changes be well called corruptions.
Or again, let us reflect on the ethical vicissitudes of the
chosen people. How different is their grovelling and
cowardly temper on leaving Egypt from the chivalrous
spirit, as it may be called, of the age of David, or, again,
from the bloody fanaticism which braved Titus and
Hadrian ! In what contrast is that impotence of mind
which gave way at once, and bowed the knee, at the very
sight of a pagan idol, with the stern iconoclasm and
bigoted nationality of later Judaism ! How startling the
apparent absence of what would be called talent in this
people during their supernatural Dispensation, compared
176 FIRST NOTE OF A GENUINE DEVELOPMENT. [CH. V.
with, the gifts of mind which, various witnesses assign to
tkem now !
7.
And, in like manner, ideas may remain, when the ex-
pression of them is indefinitely varied; and we cannot
determine whether a professed development is truly such
or not, without some further knowledge than an experience
of the mere fact of this variation. Nor will our instinctive
feelings serve as a criterion. It must have been an extreme
shock to St. Peter to be told he must slay and eat beasts, un-
clean as well as clean, though, such a, command was implied
already in that faith which he held and taught ; a shock,
which a, single effort, or a short period, or the force of
reason would not suffice to overcome. Nay, it may hap-
pen that a representation which varies from its original
may be felt as more true and faithful than one which has
more pretensions to be exact. So it is with many a por-
trait which is not striking : at first look, of course, it dis-
appoints us ; but when we are familiar with it, we see in
it what we could not see at first, and prefer it, not to a
perfect likeness, but to many a sketch which is so precise
as to be a caricature.
8.
On the other hand, real perversions and corruptions are
often not so unlike externally to the doctrine from which
they come, as are changes which are consistent with it
and true developments. When Borne changed from a
Republic to an Empire, it was a real alteration of polity,
or what may be called a corruption ; yet in appearance
the change was small. The old offices or functions of
government remained : it was only that the Imperator, or
Comiminder in Chief, concentrated them in his own per-
SECT. I.] PRESERVATION OF TYPE. 177
son. Augustus was Consul and Tribune, Supreme Pontiff
and Censor, and the Imperial rule was, in the words of
Gibbon, " an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of
a commonwealth." On the other hand, when the dis-
simulation of Augustus was exchanged for the ostentation
of Dioclesian, the real alteration of constitution was trivial,
but the appearance of change was great. Instead of plain
Consul, Censor, and Tribune, Dioclesian became Dominus
or King, assumed the diadem, and threw around him the
forms of a court.
Nay, one cause of corruption in religion is the refusal
to follow the course of doctrine as it moves on, and an
obstinacy in the notions of the past. Certainly : as we
see conspicuously in the history of the chosen race. The
Samaritans who refused to add the Prophets to the Law,
and the Sadducees who denied a truth which was covertly
taught in the Book of Exodus, were in appearance only
faithful adherents to the primitive doctrine. Our Lord
found His people precisians in their obedience to the
letter ; He condemned them for net being led on to its
spirit, that is, to its developments. The Gospel is the
development of the Law ; yet what difference seems wider
than that which separates the unbending rule of Moses
from the " grace and truth " which " came by Jesus
Christ?" Samuel had of old time fancied that the tall
Eliab was the Lord's anointed ; and Jesse had thought
David only fit for the sheepcote ; and when the Great
King came, He was " as a root out of a dry ground :" but
strength came out of weakness, and out of the strong
sweetness.
So it is in the case of our friends ; the most obse-
quious are not always the truest, and seeming cruelty is
often genuine affection. We know the conduct of the
three daughters in the drama towards the old king. She
who had found her love " more richer than her tongue,"
N
178 SECOND NOTE. [CH. V.
and could not "heave her heart into her mouth/' was
in the event alone true to her father.
9.
An idea then does not always bear about it the same
external image ; this circumstance, however, has no force
to weaken the argument for its substantial identity, as
drawn from its external sameness, when such sameness
remains. On the contrary, for that very reason, unity
of type becomes so much the surer guarantee of the
healthiness and soundness of developments, when it is
persistently preserved in spite of their number or
importance.
SECTION II.
SECOND NOTE. CONTINUITY OF PRINCIPLES.
As in mathematical creations figures are formed on dis-
tinct formulae, which are the laws under which they are
developed, so it is in ethical and political subjects. Doc-
trines expand variously according to the mind, individual
or social, into which they are received ; and the peculiari-
ties of the recipient are the regulating power, the law, the
organization, or, as it may be called, the form of the
development. The life of doctrines may be said to consist
in the law or principle which they embody.
Principles are abstract and general, doctrines relate to
facts ; doctrines develope, and principles at first sight do
not ; doctrines grow and are enlarged, principles are per-
manent ; doctrines are intellectual, and principles are more
immediately ethical and practical. Systems live in prin-
ciples and represent doctrines. Personal responsibility is a
principle, the Being of a God is a doctrine ; from that
doctrine all theology has come in due course, whereas that
SECT. II.] CONTINUITY OF PRINCIPLES. 179
principle is not clearer under the Gospel than in paradise,
and depends, not on belief in an Almighty Governor, but
on conscience.
Yet the difference between the two sometimes merely
exists in our mode of viewing them ; and what is a doctrine
in one philosophy is a principle in another. Personal
responsibility may be made a doctrinal basis, and develope
into Arminianism or Pelagianism. Again, it may be
discussed whether infallibility is a principle or a doctrine
of the Church of Rome, and dogmatism a principle or
doctrine of Christianity. Again, consideration for the poor
is a doctrine of the Church considered as a religious body,
and a principle when she is viewed as a political power.
Doctrines stand to principles, as the definitions to the
axioms and postulates of mathematics. Thus the 15th and
17th propositions of Euclid's book I. are developments, not
of the three first axioms, which are required in the proof,
but of the definition of a right angle. Perhaps the per-
plexity, which arises in the mind of a beginner, on learning
the early propositions of the second book, arises from these
being more prominently exemplifications of axioms than
developments of definitions. He looks for developments
from the definition of the rectangle, and finds but various
particular cases of the general truth, that " the whole is
equal to its parts."
2.
It might be expected that the Catholic principles would
be later in development than the Catholic doctrines, inas-
much as they lie deeper in the mind, and are assumptions
rather than objective professions. This has been the
case. The Protestant controversy has mainly turned, or is
turning, on one or other of the principles of Catholicity ;
and to this day the rule of Scripture Interpretation,
the doctrine of Inspiration, the relation of Faith to Reason,
N 2
180 SECOND NOTE. [CH. V.
moral responsibility, private judgment, inherent grace, the
seat of infallibility, remain, I suppose, more or less unde-
veloped, or, at least, undefined, by the Church.
Doctrines stand to principles, if it may Ite said without
fancifulness, as fecundity viewed relatively to generation,
though this analogy must not be strained. Doctrines are
developed by the operation of principles, and develope
variously according to those principles. Thus a belief in
the transitiveness of worldly goods leads the Epicurean to
enjoyment, and the ascetic to mortification ; and, from their
common doctrine of the sinfulness of matter, the Alexan-
drian Gnostics became sensualists, and the Syrian devotees.
The same philosophical elements, received into a certain
sensibility or insensibility to sin and its consequences, leads
one mind to the Church of Rome ; another to what, for
want of a better word, may be called Germanism.
Again, religious investigation sometimes is conducted on
the principle that it is a duty " to follow and speak the
truth," which really means that it is no duty to fear error,
or to consider what is safest, or to shrink from scattering
doubts, or to regard the responsibility of misleading ; and
thus it terminates in heresy or infidelity, without any blame
to religious investigation in itself.
Again, to take a different subject, what constitutes a
chief interest of dramatic compositions and tales, is to use
external circumstances, which may be considered their law
of development, as a means of bringing out into different
shapes, and showing under new aspects, the personal pecu-
liarities of character, according as either those circum-
stances or those peculiarities vary in the case of the person-
ages introduced.
3.
Principles are popularly said to develope when they are
but exemplified ; thus the various sects of Protestantism,
SECT. II.] CONTINUITY OF PRINCIPLES. 181
unconnected as they are with, each other, are called deve-
lopments of the principle of Private Judgment, of which
really they are but applications and results.
A development, to be faithful, must retain both the
doctrine and the principle with which it started. Doctrine
without its correspondent principle remains barren, if not
lifeless, of which the Greek Church seems an instance ; or
it forms those hollow professions which are familiarly called
" shams," as a zeal for an established Church and its creed
on merely conservative or temporal motives. Such, too,
was the Roman Constitution between the reigns of Augus-
tus and Dioclesian.
On the other hand, principle without its corresponding
doctrine may be considered as the state of religious
minds in the heathen world, viewed relatively to Reve-
lation ; that is, of the " children of God who are scattered
abroad/'
Pagans may have, heretics cannot have, the same prin-
ciples as Catholics ; if the latter have the same, they are
not real heretics, but in ignorance. Principle is a better
test of heresy than doctrine. Heretics are true to their
principles, but change to and fro, backwards and forwards,
in opinion ; for very opposite doctrines may be exemplifi-
cations of the same principle. Thus the Antiochenes and
other heretics sometimes were Arians, sometimes Sabellians,
sometimes Nestorians, sometimes Monophysites, as if at
random, from fidelity to their common principle, that there
is no mystery in theology. Thus Calvinists become Uni-
tarians from the principle of private judgment. The doc-
trines of heresy are accidents and soon run to an end ; its
principles are, everlasting.
This, too, is often the solution of the paradox " Extremes
meet," and of the startling reactions which take place in
individuals ; viz., the presence of some one principle or
condition, which is dominant in their minds from first to
182 SECOND NOTE. [cH. Y.
last. If one of two contradictory alternatives be necessarily
true on a certain hypothesis, then the denial of the one leads,
by mere logical consistency and without direct reasons, to
a reception of the other. Thus the question between the
Church of Rome and Protestantism falls in some minds into
the proposition, " Rome is either the pillar and ground of
the Truth or she is Antichrist ;" in proportion, then, as
they revolt from considering her the latter are they com-
pelled to receive her as the former. Hence, too, men may
pass from infidelity to Rome, and from Rome to infidelity,
from a conviction in both courses that there is no tangible
intellectual position between the two.
Protestantism, viewed in its more Catholic aspect, is doc-
trine without active principle ; viewed in its heretical, it is
active principle without doctrine. Many of its speakers,
for instance, use eloquent and glowing language about the
Church and its characteristics : some of them do not realize
what they say, but use high words and general statements
about " the faith," and " primitive truth," and " schism,"
and " heresy," to which they attach no definite meaning ;
while others speak of " unity," " universality," and " Catho-
licity," and use the words in their own sense and for their
own ideas.
4.
The science of grammar affords another instance of the
existence of special laws in the formation of systems.
Some languages have more elasticity than others, and
greater capabilities ; and the difficulty of explaining the
fact cannot lead us to doubt it. There are languages,
for instance, which have a capacity for compound words,
which, we cannot tell why, is in matter of fact denied to
others. We feel the presence of a certain character or
genius in each, which determines its path and its range ;
and to discover and enter into it is one part of refined
SECT. II.] CONTINUITY OF PRINCIPLES. 183
scholarship. And when particular writers, in consequence
perhaps of some theory, tax a language beyond its powers,
the failure is conspicuous. Yery subtle, too, and difficult
to draw out, are the principles on which depends the
formation of proper names in a particular people. In
works of fiction, names or titles, significant or ludicrous,
must be invented for the characters introduced ; and some
authors excel in their fabrication, while others are equally
unfortunate. Foreign novels, perhaps, attempt to frame
English surnames, and signally fail ; yet what every one
feels to be the case, no one can analyze: that is, our
surnames are constructed on a law which is only exhibited
in particular instances, and which rules their formation on
certain, though subtle, determinations.
And so in philosophy, the systems of physics or morals,
which go by celebrated names, proceed upon the assump-
tion of certain conditions which are necessary for every
stage of their development. The Newtonian theory of
gravitation is based on certain axioms ; for instance, that
the fewest causes assignable for phenomena are the true
ones : and the application of science to practical purposes
depends upon the hypothesis that what happens to-day
will happen to-morrow.
And so in military matters, the discovery of gunpowder
developed the science of attack and defence in a new
instrumentality. Again, it is said that when Napoleon
began his career of victories, the enemy's generals pro-
nounced that his battles, were fought against rule, and that
he ought not to be victorious.
5.
So states have their respective policies, on which they
move forward, and which are the conditions of their well-
being. Thus it is sometimes said that the true policy of
the American Union, or the law of its prosperity, is not the
184 SECOND NOTE. [CH. V.
enlargement of its territory, but the cultivation of its
internal resources. Thus Russia is said to be weak in
attack, strong in defence, and to grow, not by the sword,
but by diplomacy. Thus Islamism is said to be the form
or life of the Ottoman, and Protestantism of tlie British
Empire, and the admission of European ideas into the one,
or of Catholic ideas into the other, to be the destruction of
the respective conditions of their power. Thus Augustus
and Tiberius governed by dissimulation ; thus Pericles in
his " Funeral Oration " draws out the principles of the
Athenian commonwealth, viz., that it is carried on, not by
formal and severe enactments, but by the ethical character
and spontaneous energy of the people.
The political principles of Christianity, if it be right to
use such words of a divine polity, are laid down for us in
the Sermon on the Mount. Oontrariwise to other empires,
Christians conquer by yielding ; they gain influence by
shrinking from it ; they possess the earth by renouncing it.
Gibbon speaks of " the vices of the clergy " as being " to
a philosophic eye far less dangerous than their virtues/' '
Again, as to Judaism, it may be asked on what law it
developed ; that is, whether Mahometanism may not be
considered as a sort of Judaism, as formed by the presence
of a different class of influences. In this contrast between
them, perhaps it may be said that the expectation of a
Messiah was the principle or law which expanded the
elements, almost common to Judaism with Mahometanism,
into their respective characteristic shapes.
One of the points ol discipline to which Wesley attached
most importance was that of preaching early in the
morning. This was his principle. In Georgia, he began
preaching at five o'clock every day, winter and summer.
" Early preaching," he said, " is the glory of the Method-
ists ; whenever this is dropt, they will dwindle away into
4 Ch. xlix.
SECT. III.] THIRD NOTE. 185
nothing, they have lost their first love, they are a fallen
people."
6.
Now, these instances show, as has been incidentally
observed of some of them, that the destruction of the
special laws or principles of a development is its corruption.
Thus, as to nations, when we talk of the spirit of a people
being lost, we do not mean that this or that act has been
committed, or measure carried, but that certain lines of
thought or conduct by which it has grown great are
abandoned. Thus the Roman Poets consider their State
in course of ruin because its prisci mores and pietas were
failing. And so we speak of countries or persons as being
in a false position, when they take up a course of policy, or
assume a profession, inconsistent with their natural interests
or real character. Judaism, again, was rejected when it
rejected the Messiah.
Thus the continuity or the alteration of the principles on
which an idea has developed is a second mark of discrimi-
nation between a true development and a corruption.
SECTION III.
THIRD NOTE J POWER OF ASSIMILATION.
In the physical world, whatever has life is characterized
by growth, so that in no respect to grow is to cease to
live. It grows by taking into its own substance external
materials ; and this absorption or assimilation is completed
when the materials appropriated come to belong to it or
enter into its unity. Two things cannot become one,
except there be a power of assimilation in one or the other.
Sometimes assimilation is effected only with an effort ; it
186 THIRD NOTE. [CH. V.
is possible to die of repletion, and there are animals who
lie torpid for a time under the contest between the foreign
substance and the assimilating power. And different food
is proper for different recipients.
This analogy may be taken to illustrate certain pecu-
liarities in the growth or development in ideas, which were
noticed in the first Chapter. It is otherwise with mathe-
tical and other abstract creations, which, like the soul
itself, are solitary and self-dependent ; but doctrines and
views which relate to man are not placed in a void, but in
the crowded world, and make way for themselves by
interpenetration, and dev elope by absorption. Facts and
opinions, which have hitherto been regarded in other rela-
tions and grouped round other centres, henceforth are
gradually attracted to a new influence and subjected to a new
sovereign. They are modified, laid down afresh, thrust
aside, as the case may be. A new element of order and
composition has come among them ; and its life is proved
by this capacity of expansion, without disarrangement or
dissolution. An eclectic, conservative, assimilating, healing,
moulding process, a unitive power, is of the essence, and a
third test, of a faithful development.
2.
Thus, a power of development is a proof of life, not only
in its essay, but especially in its success ; for a mere
formula either does not expand or is shattered in ex-
panding. A living idea becomes many, yet remains one.
The attempt at development shows the presence of a
principle, and its success the presence of an idea. Prin-
ciples stimulate thought, and an idea concentrates it.
The idea never was that throve and lasted, yet, like
mathematical truth, incorporated nothing from external
sources. So far from the fact of such incorporation im-
plying corruption, as is sometimes supposed, development
SECT. III.] POWER OF ASSIMILATION. 187
is a process of incorporation. Mahometantism may be in
external developments scarcely more than a compound of
other theologies, yet no one would deny that there has
been a living idea somewhere in a religion, which has
been so strong, so wide, so lasting a bond of union in the
history of the world. Why it has not continued to
develope after its first preaching, if this be the case, as it
seems to be, cannot be determined without a greater
knowledge of that religion, and how far it is merely
political, how far theological, than we commonly possess.
3.
In Christianity, opinion, while a raw material, is called
philosophy or scholasticism ; when a rejected refuse, it is
called heresy.
Ideas are more open to an external bias in their com-
mencement than afterwards ; hence the great majority of
writers who consider the Medieval Church corrupt, trace
its corruption, to the first four centuries, not to what are
culled the dark ages.
That an idea more readily coalesces with these ideas than
with those does not show that it has been unduly influ-
enced, that is, corrupted by them, but that it has an
antecedent affinity to them. At least it shall be assumed
here that, when the Gospels speak of virtue going out of
our Lord, and of His healing with the clay which His lips
had moistened, they afford instances, not of a perversion of
Christianity, but of affinity to notions which were external
to it ; and that St. Paul was not biassed by Orientalism,
though he said that it was " excellent not to touch a
4.
Thus in politics, too, ideas are sometimes proposed,
discussed, rejected, or adopted, as it may happen, and some-
188 THIRD NOTE. [CH. V.
times they are shown to be unmeaning and impossible ;
sometimes they are true, but partially so, or in subordina-
tion to other ideas, with which, in consequence, they are
as wholes or in part incorporated, as far as these have
affinities to them, the power to incorporate being thus
recognized as a property of life. Mr. Bentham's system
was an attempt to make the circle of legal and moral truths
developments of certain principles of his own ; — those
principles of his may, if it so happen, prove unequal to
the weight of truths which are eternal, and the system
founded on them may break into pieces ; or again, a State
may absorb certain of them, for which it has affinity, that
is, it may develope in Benthamism, yet remain in sub-
stance what it was before. In the history of the French
Revolution we read of many middle parties, who attempted
to form theories of constitutions short of those which they
would call extreme, and successively failed from the want
of power or reality in their characteristic ideas. The
Semi-arians attempted a middle way between orthodoxy
and heresy, but could not stand their ground ; at length
part fell into Macedonianism, and part joined the Church.
5.
The stronger and more living is an idea, that is, the
more powerful hold it exercises on the minds of men, the
more able is it to dispense with safeguards, and trust to
itself against the danger of corruption. As strong frames
exult in their agility, and healthy constitutions throw off
ailments, so parties or schools that live can afford to be
rash, and will sometimes be betrayed into extravagances,
yet are brought right by their inherent vigour. On the
other hand, unreal systems are commonly decent exter-
nally. Forms, subscriptions, or Articles of religion are
indispensable when the principle of life is weakly. Thus
Presbyterianism has maintained its original theology in
SECT. IV.] FOURTH. NOTE. 189
Scotland where legal subscriptions are enforced, while it
has run into Arianism or Unitarianism where that pro-
tection is away. We have yet to see whether the Free
Kirk can keep its present theological ground. The
Church of Rome can consult expedience more freely than
other bodies, as trusting to her living tradition, and is
sometimes thought to disregard principle and scruple
when she is but dispensing with forms. Thus Saints
are often characterized by acts which are no patterns for
others ; and the most gifted men are, by reason of their
very gifts, sometimes led into fatal inadvertences. Hence
vows are the wise defence of unstable virtue, and general
rules the refuge of feeble authority.
And so much may suffice on the unitive poioer of faithful
developments, which constitutes their third characteristic.
SECTION IY.
FOURTH NOTE. LOGICAL SEQUENCE.
Logic is the organization of thought, and, as being
such, is a security for the faithfulness of intellectual
developments ; and the necessity of using it is undeniable
as far as this, that its rules must not be transgressed.
That it is not brought into exercise in every instance of
doctrinal development is owing to the varieties of mental
constitution, whether in communities or in individuals,
with whom great truths or seeming truths are lodged.
The question indeed may be asked whether a development
can be other in any case than a logical operation ; but, if
by this is meant a conscious reasoning from premisses to
conclusion, of course the answer must be in the negative.
190 FOURTH NOTE. [CH. V.
An idea under one or other of its aspects grows in the
mind by remaining there ; it becomes familiar and distinct,
and is viewed in its relations ; it leads to other aspects,
and these again to others, subtle, recondite, original, accord-
ing to the character, intellectual and moral, of the recipient ;
and thus a body of thought is gradually formed without
his recognizing what is going on within him. And all
this while, or at least from time to time, external circum-
stances elicit into formal statement the thoughts which are
coming into being in the depths of his mind ; and soon he
has to begin to defend them ; and then again a further
process must take place, of analyzing his statements and
ascertaining their dependence one on another. And thus
he is led to regard as consequences, and to trace to princi-
ples, what hitherto he has discerned by a moral perception,
and adopted on sympathy ; and logic is brought in to
arrange and inculcate what no science was employed in
gaining.
And so in the same way, such intellectual processes, as
are carried on silently and spontaneously in the mind of a
party or school, of necessity come to light at a later date,
and are recognized, and their issues are scientifically
arranged. And then logic has the further function of
propagation ; analogy, the nature of the case, antecedent
probability, application of principles, congruity, expedience,
being some of the methods of proof by which the develop-
ment is continued from mind to mind and established in
the faith of the community.
Yet even then the analysis is not made on a principle,
or with any view to its whole course and finished results.
Each argument is brought for an immediate purpose ;
minds develope step by step, without looking behind them
or anticipating their goal, and without either intention or
promise of forming a system. Afterwards, however, this
logical character which the whole wears becomes a test
SECT. IV.] LOGICAL SEQUENCE. 191
that the process has been a true development, not a per-
version or corruption, from its evident naturalness ; and
in some cases from the gravity, distinctness, precision, and
majesty of its advance, and the harmony of its proportions,
like the tall growth, and graceful branching, and rich
foliage, of some vegetable production.
2.
The process of development, thus capable of a logical
expression, has sometimes been invidiously spoken of as
rationalism and contrasted with faith. But, though a
particular doctrine or opinion which is subjected to de-
velopment may happen to be rationalistic, and, as is the
original, such are its results : and though we may develope
erroneously, that is, reason incorrectly, yet the developing
itself as little deserves that imputation in any case, as an
inquiry into an historical fact, which we do not thereby
make but ascertain, — for instance, whether or not St. Mark
wrote his Gospel with St. Matthew before him, or whether
Solomon brought his merchandize from Tartessus or some
Indian port. Rationalism is the exercise of reason instead
of faith in matters of faith ; but one does not see how it
can be faith to adopt the premisses, and unbelief to accept
the conclusion.
At the same time it may be granted that the spontaneous
process which goes on within the mind itself is higher and
choicer than that which is logical; for the latter, being
scientific, is common property, and can be taken and made
use of by minds who are personally strangers, in any true
sense, both to the ideas in question and to their develop-
ment.
3.
Thus, the holy Apostles would know without words all
the truths concerning the high doctrines of theology,
192 FOURTH NOTE. [CH. V.
which controversialists after them have piously and charit-
ably reduced to formulae, and developed through argument.
Thus, St. Justin or St. Irenseus might be without any
digested ideas of Purgatory or Original Sin, yet have an
intense feeling, which they had not defined or located,
both of the fault of our first nature and the responsibilities
of our nature regenerate. Thus St. Antony said to the
philosophers who came to mock him, " He whose mind is
in health does not need letters ;" and St. Ignatius Loyola,
while yet an unlearned neophyte, was favoured with
transcendent perceptions of the Holy Trinity during his
penance at Manresa. Thus St. Athanasius himself is more
powerful in statement and exposition than in proof ; while
in Bellarmine we find the whole series of doctrines care-
fully drawn out, duly adjusted with one another, and
exactly analyzed one by one.
The history of empires and of public men supplies so
many instances of logical development in the field of
politics, that it is needless to do more than to refer to one
of them. It is illustrated by the words of Jeroboam, "Now
shall this kingdom return to the house of David, if this
people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at
Jerusalem. . . Wherefore the king took counsel and made
two calves of gold, and said unto them, Behold thy gods,
0 Israel."" Idolatry was a duty of kingcraft with the
schismatical kingdom.
4.
A specimen of logical development is afforded us in the
history of Lutheranism as it has of late years been drawn
out by various English writers. Luther started on a
double basis, his dogmatic principle being contradicted by
his right of private judgment, and his sacramental by his
theory of justification. The sacramental element never
showed signs of life ; but on his death, that which he
SECT. IV.] LOGICAL SEQUENCE. 193
represented in his own person as a teacher, the dogmatic,
gained the ascendancy ; and " every expression of his upon
controverted points became a norm for the party, which,
at all times the largest, was at last coextensive with the
Church itself. This almost idolatrous veneration was
perhaps increased by the selection of declarations of
faith, of which the substance on the whole was his, for the
symbolical books of his Church." 5 Next a reaction took
place ; private judgment was restored to the supremacy.
Calixtus put reason, and Spener the so-called religion of
the heart, in the place of dogmatic correctness. Pietism
for the time died away ; but rationalism developed in
Wolf, who professed to prove all the orthodox doctrines,
by a process of reasoning, from premisses level with the
reason. It was soon found that the instrument which
Wolf had used for orthodoxy, could as plausibly be used
against it ; — in his hands it had proved the Creed ; in the
hands of Semler, Ernesti, and others, it disproved the
authority of Scripture. What was religion to be made to
consist in now ? A sort of philosophical Pietism followed ;
or rather Spener's pietism and the original theory of
justification were analyzed more thoroughly, and issued in
various theories of Pantheism, which from the first was at
the bottom of Luther's doctrine and personal character.
And this appears to be the state of Lutheranism at present,
whether we view it in the philosophy of Kant, in the open
infidelity of Strauss, or in the religious professions of the
new Evangelical Church, of Prussia. Applying this
instance to the subject which it has been here brought to
illustrate, I should say that the equable and orderly march
and natural succession of views, by which the creed of
Luther has been changed into the infidel or heretical
philosophy of his present representatives, is a proof that
5 Pusey on German Rationalism, p. 21, note.
194 FOURTH NOTE. [cH. V.
that change is no perversion or corruption, but a faithful
development of the original idea.
5.
This is but one out of many instances with which the
history of the Church supplies us. The fortunes of a
theological school are made in. a later generation the
measure of the teaching of its founder. The great Origen
died after his many labours in peace ; his immediate pupils
were saints and rulers in the Church ; he has the praise of
St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and St. Gregory Nazianzen, and
furnishes materials to St. Ambrose and St. Hilary ; yet,
as time proceeded, a definite heterodoxy was the growing
result of his theology, and at length, three hundred years
after his death, he was condemned, and, as has generally
been considered, in an Ecumenical Council.6 " Diodorus
of Tarsus," says Tillemont, " died at an advanced age, in
the peace of the Church, honoured by the praises of the
greatest saints, and crowned with a glory, which, having
ever attended him through life, followed him after his
death ;" 7 yet St. Cyril of Alexandria considers him and
Theodore of Mopsuestia the true authors of Nestorianism,
and he was placed in the event by the Nestorians among
their saints. Theodore himself was condemned after his
death by the same Council which is said to have con-
demned Origen, and is justly considered the chief rationa-
lizing doctor of Antiquity ; yet he was in the highest
repute in his day, and the Eastern Synod complains, as
quoted by Facundus, that " Blessed Theodore, who died so
happily, who was so eminent a teacher for five and forty
years, and overthrew every heresy, and in his lifetime
experienced no imputation from the orthodox, now after
6 Halloix, Valesius, Lequien, Gieseler, Dollinger, &c., say that he was
condemned, not in the fifth Council, but in the Council under Mennas.
7 Mein. Eccl. torn. viii. p. 562.
SECT. V.] FIFTH NOTE. 195
his death so long ago, after his many conflicts, after
his ten thousand books composed in refutation of errors,
after his approval in the sight of priests, emperors, and
people, runs the risk of receiving the reward of heretics,
and of being called their chief/'8 There is a certain con-
tinuous advance and determinate path which belong to
the history of a doctrine, policy, or institution, and which
impress upon the common sense of mankind, that what it
ultimately becomes is the issue of what it was at first.
This sentiment is expressed in the proverb, not limited to
Latin, Exitus acta probat ; and is sanctioned by Divine
Wisdom, when, warning us against false prophets, it says,
" Ye shall know them by their fruits."
A doctrine, then, professed in its mature years by a
philosophy or religion, is likely to be a true development,
not a corruption, in proportion as it seems to be the logical
issue of its original tea ching.
SECTION Y.
FIFTH NOTE. ANTICIPATION OF ITS FUTURE.
Since, when an idea is living, that is, influential and
effective, it is sure to develope according to its own nature,
and the tendencies, which are carried out on the long run,
may under favourable circumstances show themselves early
as well as late, and logio is the same in all ages, instances
of developments which are to come, though vague and
isolated, may occur from the very first, though a lapse of
time be necessary to bring them to perfection. And since
developments are in great measure only aspects of the
idea from which they come, and all of them are natural
consequences of it, it is often a matter of accident in what
8 Def. Tr. Cap. viii. init.
o 2
196 FIFTH NOTE. [CH. V.
order they are carried out in individual minds ; and it is
in no wise strange that here and there definite specimens
of advanced teaching should very early occur, which in
the historical course are not found till a late day. The
fact, then, of such early or recurring intimations of
tendencies which afterwards are fully realized, is- a sort of
evidence that those later and more systematic fulfilments
are only in accordance with the original idea.
2.
Nothing is more common, for instance, than accounts
or legends of the anticipations, which great men have
given in boyhood of the bent of their minds, as afterwards
displayed in their history ; so much so that the popular
expectation has sometimes led to the invention of them.
The child Cyrus mimics a despot's power, and St.
Athanasius is elected Bishop by his playfellows.
It is noticeable that in the eleventh century, when
the Russians were but pirates upon the Black Sea, Con-
stantinople was their aim ; and that a prophecy was in
circulation in that city that they should one day gain
possession of it.
In the reign of James the First, we have an observable
anticipation of the system of influence in the management
of political parties, which was developed by Sir E.
Walpole a century afterwards. This attempt is traced by
a living writer to the ingenuity of Lord Bacon. "He
submitted to the King that there were expedients for
more judiciously managing a House of Commons ; . .
that much might be done by forethought towards filling
the House with well-affected persons, winning or blinding
the lawyers . . and drawing the chief constituent bodies
of the assembly, the country gentlemen, the merchants,
the courtiers, to act for the King's advantage ; that it
would be expedient to tender voluntarily certain graces
SECT. V.] ANTICIPATION OF ITS FUTURE. 197
and modifications of the King's prerogative," &c.9 The
writer adds, " This circumstance, like several others in the
present reign, is curious, as it shows the rise of a system-
atic parliamentary influence, which was one day to become
the mainspring of government."
3.
Arcesilas and Carneades, the founders of the later
Academy, are known to have innovated on the Platonic
doctrine by inculcating a universal scepticism ; and they
did this, as if on the authority of Socrates, who had
adopted the method of ironia against the Sophists, on
their professing to know everything. This, of course, was
an insufficient plea. However, could it be shown that
Socrates did on one or two occasions evidence deliberate
doubts on the great principles of theism or morals,
would any one deny that the innovation in question had
grounds for being considered a true development, not a
corruption ?
It is certain that, in the idea of Monachism, prevalent
in ancient times, manual labour had a more prominent
place than study ; so much so that De Ranee, the cele-
brated Abbot of La Trappe, in controversy with Mabillon,
maintained his ground with great plausibility against the
latter's apology for the literary occupations for which the
Benedictines of France are so famous. Nor can it be
denied that the labours of such as Mabillon and Mont-
faucon are at least a development upon the simplicity of
the primitive institution. And yet it is remarkable that
St. Pachomius, the first author of a monastic rule, enjoined
a library in each of his houses, and appointed conferences
and disputations three times a week on religious subjects,
interpretation of Scripture, or points of theology. St.
Basil, the founder of Monachism in Pontus, one of the
9 Hallam's Const. Hist. ch. vi. p. 461.
198 FIFTH NOTE. [cH. V.
most learned of the Greek Fathers, wrote his theological
treatises in the intervals of agricultural labour. St.
Jerome, the author of the Latin versions of Scripture, lived
as a poor monk in a cell at Bethlehem. These, indeed,
were but exceptions in the character of early Monachism ;
but they suggest its capabilities and anticipate its history.
Literature is certainly not inconsistent with its idea.
4.
In the controversies with the Gnostics, in the second
century, striking anticipations occasionally occur, in the
works of their Catholic opponents, of the formal dog-
matic teaching developed in the Church in the course of
the Nestorian and Monophysite controversies in the fifth.
On the other hand, Paul of Samosata, one of the first
disciples of the Syrian school of theology, taught a heresy
sufficiently like Nestorianism, in which that school termi-
nated, to be mistaken for it in later times ; yet for a long
while after him the characteristic of the school was
Arianism, an opposite heresy.
Lutheranism has by this time become in most places
almost simple heresy or infidelity ; it has terminated, if it
has even yet reached its limit, in a denial both of the
Canon and the Creed, nay, of many principles of morals.
Accordingly the question arises, whether these conclusions
are in fairness to be connected with its original teaching
or are a corruption. And it is no little aid towards its
resolution to find that Luther himself at one time rejected
the Apocalypse, called the Epistle of St. James "straminea,"
condemned the word "Trinity," fell into a kind of
Eutychianism in his view of the Holy Eucharist, and in a
particular case sanctioned bigamy. Calvinism, again, in
various distinct countries, has become Socinianism, and
Calvin himself seems to have denied our Lord's Eternal
Sonship and ridiculed the Nicene Creed.
SECT. VI.] SIXTH NOTE. 199
Another evidence, then, of the faithfulness of an
ultimate development is its definite anticipation at an early
period in the history of the idea to which it belongs.
SECTION YI.
SIXTH NOTE. CONSERVATIVE ACTION UPON ITS PAST.
As developments which are preceded by definite indi-
cations have a fair presumption in their favour, so those
which do but contradict and reverse the course of doctrine
which has been developed before them, and out of which
they spring, are certainly corrupt ; for a corruption fis a
development in that very stage in which it ceases to illus-
trate, and begins to prejudice, the acquisitions gained in
its previous history.
It is the rule of creation, or rather of the phenomena
which it presents, that life passes on to its termination by
a gradual, imperceptible course of change. There is ever
a maximum in earthly excellence, and the operation of
the same causes which made things great makes them
small again. Weakness is but the resulting product of
power. Events move in cycles ; all things come round
" the sun ariseth and goeth down, and hasteth to his place
where he arose." Flowers first bloom, and then fade ;
fruit ripens and decays. The fermenting process, unless
stopped at the due point,' corrupts the liquor which it has
created. The grace of spring, the richness of autumn
are but for a moment, and worldly moralists bid us Carpe
diem,) for we shall have no second opportunity. Virtue
seems to lie in a mean, between vice and vice ; and as it
grew out of imperfection, so to grow into enormity.
There is a limit to human knowledge, and both sacred and
200 SIXTH NOTE. [CH. V.
profane writers witness that overwisdom is folly. And in
the political world states rise and fall, the instruments of
their aggrandizement becoming the weapons of their de-
struction. And hence the frequent ethical maxims, such
as, " Ne quid nimis" " Medio tutissimus" "Vaulting am-
bition," which seem to imply that too much of what is
good is evil.
So great a paradox of course cannot be maintained as
that truth literally leads to falsehood, or that there can be
an excess of virtue ; but the appearance of things and the
popular language about them will at least serve us in
obtaining an additional test for the discrimination of a
bond fide development of an idea from its corruption.
A true development, then, may be described as one which
is conservative of the course of antecedent developments
being really those antecedents and something besides them :
it is an addition which illustrates, not obscures, corrobo-
rates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it
proceeds ; and this is its characteristic as contrasted with
a corruption.
2.
For instance, a gradual conversion from a false to a true
religion, plainly, has much of the character of a continuous
process, or a development, in the mind itself, even when
the two religions, which are the limits of its course, are
antagonists. Now let it be observed, that such a change
consists in addition and increase chiefly, not in destruction.
" True religion is the summit and perfection of false reli-
gions ; it combines in one whatever there is of good and
true separately remaining in each. And in like manner
the Catholic Creed is for the most part the combination of
separate truths, which heretics have divided among them-
selves, and err in dividing. So that, in matter of fact, if
a religious mind were educated in and sincerely attached
SECT. VI.] CONSERVATIVE ACTION UPON ITS PAST. 201
to some form of heathenism or heresy, and then were
brought under the light of truth, it would be drawn off
from error into the truth, not by losing what it had, but
by gaining what it had not, not by being unclothed, but
by being ' clothed upon/ ' that mortality may be swal-
lowed up of life.' That same principle of faith which at-
taches it at first to the wrong doctrine would attach it to
the truth ; and that portion of its original doctrine, which
was to be cast. off as absolutely false, would not be directly
rejected, but indirectly, in the reception of the truth which
is its opposite. True conversion is ever of a positive, not
a negative character.5'' l
Such too is the theory of the Fathers as regards the
doctrines fixed by Councils, as is instanced in the language
of St. Leo. " To be seeking for what has been disclosed,
to reconsider what has been finished, to tear up what has
been laid down, what is this but to be unthankful for what is
gained ? " Yincentius of Lerins, in like manner, speaks
of the development of Christian doctrine, as profectm fidei
non permutation And so as regards the Jewish Law, our
Lord said that He came " not to destroy, but to fulfil/'
3.
Mahomet is accused of contradicting his earlier revela-
tions by his later, " which is a thing so well known to those
of his sect that they all acknowledge it ; and therefore
when the contradictions are such as they cannot solve them,
then they will have one x>f the contradictory places to be
revoked. And they reckon in the whole Alcoran about a
hundred and fifty verses which are thus revoked." 4
Schelling, says Mr. Dewar, considers " that the time
has arrived when an esoteric speculative Christianity ought
1 Tracts for the Times, No. 85, p. 73. [Discuss, p. 200 ; vide also Essay
on Assent, pp. 249—251.]
2 Ep. 162. 3 Ib. p. 309. « Prideaux, Life of Mahomet, p. 90.
202 SIXTH NOTE. [CH. V.
to take the place of the exoteric empiricism which has
hitherto prevailed." This German philosopher " acknow*
ledges that such a project is opposed to the evident design
of the Church, and of her earliest teachers." 5
4.
When Roman Catholics are accused of substituting
another Gospel for the primitive Creed, they answer that
they hold, and can show that they hold, the doctrines of
the Incarnation and Atonement, as firmly as any Protes-
tant can state them. To this it is replied that they do
certainly profess them, but that they obscure and virtually
annul them by their additions ; that the cultus of St. Mary
and the Saints is no development of the truth, but a cor-
ruption and a religious mischief to those doctrines of which
it is the corruption, because it draws away the mind and
heart from Christ. They answer that, so far from this, it
subserves, illustrates, protects the doctrine of our Lord's con-
descension and mediation. Thus the parties in controversy
join issue on the common ground, that a developed doctrine
which reverses the course of development which has pre-
ceded it, is -no true development but a corruption ; also,
that what is corrupt acts as an element of unhealthiness
towards what is sound. This subject, however, will come
before us in its proper place by and by.
5.
Blackstone supplies us with an instance in another sub-
ject-matter, of a development which is justified by its
utility, when he observes that "when society is once
formed, government results of course, as necessary to pre-
serve and to keep that society in order/'' 6
On the contrary, when the Long Parliament proceeded
to usurp the executive, they impaired the popular liberties
5 German Protestantism, p. 176. « Yol. i. p. 118.
SECT. VII.] SEVENTH NOTE. 203
which they seemed to be advancing; for the security of
those liberties depends on the separation of the executive
and legislative powers, or on the enac.tors being subjects,
not executors of the laws.
And in the history of ancient Rome, from the time that
the privileges gained by the tribunes in behalf of the peo-
ple became an object of ambition to themselves, the de-
velopment had changed into a corruption.
And thus a sixth test of a true development is that it is
of a tendency conservative of what has gone before it.
SECTION VII.
SEVENTH NOTE. CHRONIC VIGOUR.
Since the corruption of an idea, as far as the appearance
goes, is a sort of accident or affection of its development,
being the end of a course, and a transition-state leading to
a crisis, it is, as has been observed above, a brief and rapid
process. While ideas live in men's minds, they are ever
enlarging into fuller development: they will not be
stationary in their corruption any more than before it ; and
dissolution is that further state to which corruption tends.
Corruption cannot, therefore, be of long standing ; and
thus duration is another test of a faithful development.
Si gr avis, brevis; si longm, levis ; is the Stoical topic of
consolation under pain ; and of a number of disorders it
can even be said, The worse, the shorter.
Sober men are indisposed to change in civil matters, and
fear reforms and innovations, lest, if they go a little too
far, they should at once run on to some great calamities
before a remedy can be applied. The chance of a slow cor-
ruption does not strike them. Revolutions are generally
204 SEVENTH NOTE. [CH. V.
violent and swift ; now, in fact, they are the course of a
corruption.
2.
The course of heresies is always short ; it is an inter-
mediate state between life and death, or what is like death ;
or, if it does not result in death, it is resolved into some
new, perhaps opposite, course of error, which lays no
claim to be connected with it. And in this way indeed,
but in this way only, an heretical principle will con-
tinue in life many years, first running one way, then
another.
The abounding of iniquity is the token of the end
approaching ; the faithful in consequence cry out, How
long ? as if delay opposed reason as well as patience.
Three years and a half are to complete the reign of Anti-
christ.
Nor is it any real objection that the world is ever cor-
rupt, and yet, in spite of this, evil does not fill up its
measure and overflow ; for this arises from the external
counteractions of truth and virtue, which bear it back ;
let the Church be removed, and the world will soon come
to its end.
And so again, if the chosen people age after age became
worse and worse, till there was no recovery, still their
course of evil was continually broken by reformations,
and was thrown back upon a less advanced stage of
declension.
3.
It is true that decay, which is one form of corruption,
is slow ; but decay is a state in which there is no violent
or vigorous action at all, whether of a conservative or a
destructive character, the hostile influence being powerful
enough to enfeeble the functions of life, but not to quicken
SECT. VII.] CHRONIC VIGOUR. 205
its own process. And thus we see opinions, usages, and
systems, which are of venerable and imposing aspect, but
which have no soundness within them, and keep together
from a habit of consistence, or from dependence on politi-
cal institutions ; or they become almost peculiarities of a
country, or the habits of a race, or the fashions of society.
And then, at length, perhaps, they go off suddenly and
die out under the first rough influence from without.
Such are the superstitions which pervade a population,
like some ingrained die or inveterate odour, and which at
length come to an end, because nothing lasts for ever, but
which run no course, and have no history ; such was the
established paganism of classical times, which was the fit
subject of persecution, for its first breath made it crumble
and disappear. Such apparently is the state of the JNes-
torian and Monophysite communions ; such might have
been the condition of Christianity had it been absorbed by
the feudalism of the middle ages ; such too is that Protes-
tantism, or (as it sometimes calls itself) attachment to the
Establishment, which is not unfrequently the boast of the
respectable and wealthy among ourselves.
Whether Mahometanism external to Christendom, and
the Greek Church within it, fall under this description is
yet to be seen. Circumstances can be imagined which
would even now rouse the fanaticism of the Moslem ; and
the Russian despotism does not meddle with the usages,
though it may domineer over the priesthood, of the
national religion.
Thus, while a corruption is distinguished from decay by
its energetic action, it is distinguished from a development
by its transitory character.
4.
Such are seven out of various Notes, which may be
206 SEVENTH NOTE. [CH. V. SEC. VII.
assigned, of fidelity in the development of an idea. The
point to be ascertained is the unity and identity of the
idea with itself through all stages of its development from
first to last, and these are seven tokens that it may rightly
be accounted one and the same all along. To guarantee
its own substantial unity, it must be seen to be one in type,
one in its system of principles, one in its unitive power to-
wards externals, one in its logical consecutiveness, one in
the witness of its early phases to its later, one in the pro-
tection which its later extend to its earlier, and one in its
union of vigour with continuance, that is, in its tenacity.
207
CHAPTER VI.
APPLICATION OF THE SEVEN NOTES TO THE EXISTING
DEVELOPMENTS OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
APPLICATION OF THE FIRST NOTE OF A TRUE DEVELOPMENT.
PRESERVATION OF TYPE.
Now let me attempt to apply the foregoing seven Notes
of fidelity in intellectual developments to the instance of
Christian Doctrine. And first as to the Note of identity of
type
I have said above, that, whereas all great ideas are
found, as time goes on, to involve much which was not seen
at first to belong to them, and have developments, that is
enlargements, applications, uses and fortunes, very various,
one security against error and per version in the process is the
maintenance of the original type, which the idea presented
to the world at its origin, amid and through all its apparent
changes and vicissitudes from first to last.
How does this apply to Christianity ? What is its original
type ? and has that type' been preserved in the develop-
ments commonly called Catholic, which have followed, and
in the Church which embodies and teaches them ? Let
us take it as the world now views it in its age ; and let us
take it as the world once viewed it in its youth ; and let us
see whether there be any great difference between the early
and the later description of it. The following statement
will show my meaning : —
208 THE CHURCH OF [cH. VI.
There is a religious communion claiming a divine com-
mission, and holding all other religious bodies around it
heretical or infidel ; it is a well-organized, well-disciplined
body ; it is a sort of secret society, binding together its
members by influences and by engagements which it is
difficult for strangers to ascertain. It is spread over the
known world; it may be weak or insignificant locally, but
it is strong on the whole from its continuity ; it may be
smaller than all other religious bodies together, but is
larger than each separately. It is a natural enemy to
governments external to itself ; it is intolerant and engross-
ing, and tends to a new modelling of society ; it breaks
laws, it divides families. It is a gross superstition ; it is
charged with the foulest crimes ; it is despised by the
intellect of the day ; it is frightful to the imagination of
the many. And there is but one communion such.
Place this description before Pliny or Julian ; place it
before Frederick the Second or Guizot.1 " Apparent dirso
facies." Each knows at once, without asking a question,
who is meant by it. One object, and only one, absorbs
each item of the detail of the delineation.
SECTION I.
THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURIES.
The prima facie view of early Christianity, in the eyes of
witnesses external to it, is presented to us in the brief but
vivid descriptions given by Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny,
the only heathen writers who distinctly mention it for the
first hundred and fifty years.
Tacitus is led to speak of the Religion, on occasion of
1 [This juxtaposition of names has been strangely distorted. In the
intention of the author, Guizot matched with Pliny, not with Frederick.]
SECT, I.] THE FIUST CENTURIES. 209
the conflagration of Rome, which was popularly imputed
to Nero. "To put an end to the report," he says, "he
laid the guilt on others, and visited them with the most
exquisite punishment, those, namely, who, held in abhor-
rence for their crimes (per flagitia invisos), were popularly
called Christians. The author of that profession (nominis)
was Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was capitally
punished by the Procurator, Pontius Pilate. The deadly
superstition (exitiabilis superstitio), though checked for a
while, broke out afresh ; and that, not only throughout
Judaea, the original seat of the evil, but through the City
also, whither all things atrocious or shocking (atrocia aut
pudenda) flow together from every quarter and thrive. At
first, certain were seized who avowed it ; then, on their
report, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much of firing
the City, as of hatred of mankind (odio Jwmani generis)."'
After describing their tortures, he continues, "In conse-
quence, though they were guilty, and, deserved most signal
punishment, they began to be pitied, as if destroyed not for
any public object, but from the barbarity of one man."
Suetonius relates the same transactions thus : — " Capital
punishments were inflicted on the Christians, a class of
men of a new and magical superstition (superstitionis novm
et malefic®)" "What gives additional character to this
statement is its context ; for it occurs as one out of various
police or sumptuary or domestic regulations, which Nero
made ; such as " controlling private expenses, forbidding
taverns to serve meat, repressing the contests of theatrical
parties, and securing the integrity of wills."
When Pliny was Governor of Pontus, he wrote his
celebrated letter to the Emperor Trajan, to ask advice
how he was to deal with the Christians, whom he found
there in great numbers. One of his points of hesitation
was, whether the very profession of Christianity was not by
itself sufficient to justify punishment ; " whether the name
210 THE CHURCH OF [cH. VI.
itself should be visited, though clear of flagitious acts
(flagitia), or only when connected with them." He says,
he had ordered for execution such as persevered in their
profession, after repeated warnings, "as not doubting, what-
ever it was they professed,, that at any rate contumacy and
inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished." He required
them to invoke the gods, to sacrifice wine and frankincense
to the images of the Emperor, and to blaspheme Christ ;
' ' to which," he adds, " it is said no real Christian can be
compelled." Renegades informed him that "the sum
total of their offence or fault was meeting before light on
an appointed day, and saying with one another a form of
words (carmen) to Christ, as if to a god, and binding them-
selves by oath, not to the commission of any wickedness,
but against the commission of theft, robbery, adultery,
breach of trust, denial of deposits ; that, after this, they
were accustomed to separate, and then to meet again for
a meal, but eaten all together and harmless : however, that
they had even left this off after his edicts enforcing the
Imperial prohibition of Hetcerito or Associations." He
proceeded to put two women to the torture, but " discovered
nothing beyond a bad and excessive superstition " (super -
stitionem pravam et immodicam), " the contagion " of which,
he continues, " had spread through villages and country,
till the temples were emptied of worshippers."
2.
In these testimonies, which will form a natural and
convenient text for what is to follow, we have various
characteristics brought before us of the religion to which
they relate. It was a superstition, as all three writers
agree ; a bad and excessive superstition, according to
Pliny ; a magical superstition, according to Suetonius ; a
deadly superstition, according to Tacitus. Next, it was
embodied in a society, and moreover a secret and unlawful
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 211
society or better ia ; and it was a proselytizing society ; and
its very name was connected with "flagitious," "atrocious,"
and " shocking " acts.
3.
Now these few points, which are not all which might be
set down, contain in themselves a distinct and significant
description of Christianity ; but they have far greater
meaning when illustrated by the history of the times,
the testimony of later writers, and the acts of the Homan
government towards its professors. It is impossible to
mistake the judgment passed on the religion by these three
writers, and still more clearly by other writers and Impe-
rial functionaries. They evidently associated Christianity
with the oriental superstitions, whether propagated by
individuals or embodied in a rite, which were in that day
traversing the Empire, and which in the event acted so
remarkable a part in breaking up the national forms of
worship, and so in preparing the way for Christianity.
This, then, is the broad view which the educated heathen
took of Christianity ; and, if it had been very unlike those
rites and curious arts in external appearance, they would
not have confused it with them.
Changes in Society are, by a providential appointment,
commonly preceded and facilitated by the setting in of a
certain current in men's thoughts and feelings in that
direction towards which a change is to be made. And, as
lighter substances whirl about before the tempest and
presage it, so words and deeds, ominous but not effective
of the coming revolution, are circulated beforehand through
the multitude, or pass across the field of events. This was
specially the case with Christianity, as became its high
dignity ; it came heralded and attended by a crowd of
shadows, shadows of itself, impotent and monstrous as
shadows are, but not at first sight distinguishable from it
p 2
212 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
by common spectators. Before the mission of the Apostles,
a movement, of which there had been earlier parallels, had
begun in Egypt, Syria, and the neighbouring countries,
tending to the propagation of new and peculiar forms of
worship throughout the Empire. Prophecies were afloat
that some new order of things was coming in from the
East, which increased the existing unsettlement of the
popular mind ; pretenders made attempts to satisfy its
wants, and old Traditions of the Truth, embodied for ages
in local or in national religions, gave to these attempts a
doctrinal and ritual shape, which became an additional
point of resemblance to that Truth which was soon visibly
to appear.
4.
The distinctive character of the rites in question lay in
their appealing to the gloomy rather than to the cheerful
and hopeful feelings, and in their influencing the mind
through fear. The notions of guilt and expiation, of evil and
good to come, and of dealings with the invisible world, were
in some shape or other pre-eminent in them, and formed a
striking contrast to the classical polytheism, which was gay
and graceful, as was natural in a civilized age. The new
rites, on the other hand, were secret ; their doctrine was
mysterious ; their profession was a discipline, beginning in
a formal initiation, manifested in an association, and exer-
cised in privation and pain. They were from the nature
of the case proselytizing societies, for they were rising into
power ; nor were they local, but vagrant, restless, intru-
sive, and encroaching. Their pretensions to supernatural
knowledge brought them into easy connexion with magic
and astrology, which are as attractive to the wealthy
and luxurious as the more vulgar superstitions to the
populace.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 213*
5.
Such were the rites of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras ; such
the Chaldeans, as they were commonly called, and the
Magi ; they came from one part of the world, and during
the first and second century spread with busy perseverance
to the northern and western extremities of the empire.2
Traces of the mysteries of Cybele, a Syrian deity, if the
famous temple at Hierapolis was hers, have been found in
Spain, in Gaul, and in Britain, as high up as the wall of
Severus. The worship of Isis was the most widely spread
of all the pagan deities ; it was received in Ethiopia and
in Germany, and even the name of Paris has been fanci-
fully traced to it. Both worships, as well as the Science of
Magic, had their colleges of priests and devotees, which
were governed by a president, and in some places were
supported by farms. Their processions passed from town
to town, begging as they went and attracting proselytes.
Apuleius describes one of them as seizing a whip, accusing
himself of some offence, and scourging himself in public.
These strollers, circulatores or agyrtce in classical language,
told fortunes, and distributed prophetical tickets to the
ignorant people who consulted them. Also, they were
learned in the doctrine of omens, of lucky and unlucky
days, of the rites of expiation and of sacrifices. Such an
agyrtes or itinerant was the notorious Alexander of Abo-
notichus, till he managed to establish himself in Pontus,
where he carried on so successful an imposition that his
fame reached Rome, and men in office and station entrusted
him with their dearest political secrets. Such a wanderer,
with a far more religious bearing and a high reputation for
virtue, was Apollonius of Tyana, who professed the Pytha-
2 Vid. Muller de Hierarch. et Ascetic. Warburton, Div. Leg. ii. 4. Selden
de Diis Syr. Acad. des Inscript. t. 3, hist. p. 296, t. 5, inem. p. 63, t. 16,
mem, p. 267. Lucian. Pseudomant. Cod. Theod. ix. 16.
214 THE CHUKCH OF [CH. VI.
gorean philosophy, claimed the gift of miracles, and
roamed about preaching, teaching, healing, and prophesy-
ing from India and Alexandria to Athens and Rome.
Another solitary proselytizer, though of an earlier time
and of an avowed profligacj^ had been the Sacrificulus,
viewed with such horror by the Roman Senate, as intro-
ducing the infamous Bacchic rites into Rome. Such, again,
were those degenerate children of a divine religion, who, in
the words of their Creator and Judge, te compassed sea and
land to make one proselyte," and made him " twofold more
the child of hell than themselves/'
6.
These vagrant religionists for the most part professed a
severe rule of life, and sometimes one of fanatical mortifi-
cation. In the mysteries of Mithras, the initiation 3 was
preceded by fasting and abstinence, and a variety of pain-
ful trials ; it was made by means of a baptism as a spiritual
washing ; and it included an offering of bread, and some
emblem of a resurrection. In the Samothracian rites it
had been a custom to initiate children ; confession too of
greater crimes seems to have been required, and would
naturally be involved in others in the inquisition prosecuted
into the past lives of the candidates for initiation. The
garments of the converts were white ; their calling was
considered as a warfare (militia), and was undertaken with
a sacramentum, or military oath. The priests shaved their
heads and wore linen, and when they were dead were
buried in a sacerdotal garment. It is scarcely necessary
to refer to the mutilation inflicted on the priests of Cybele ;
one instance of their scourgings has been already mentioned;
and Tertullian speaks of their high priest cutting his arms
3 Acad. t. 16, inem. p. 274.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 215
for the life of the Emperor Marcus.4 The priests of Isis,
in lamentation for Osiris, tore their breasts with pine cones.
This lamentation was a ritual observance, founded on some
religious mystery : Isis lost Osiris, and the initiated wept
in memory of her sorrow ; the Syrian goddess had wept
over dead Thammuz, and her mystics commemorated it by
a ceremonial woe ; in the rites of Bacchus, an image was
laid on a bier at midnight,5 which was bewailed in
metrical hymns ; the god was supposed to die, and then to
revive. Nor was this the only worship which was con-
tinued through the night ; while some of the rites were
performed in caves.
7.
Only a heavenly light can give purity to nocturnal
and subterraneous worship. Caves were at that time ap-
propriated to the worship of the infernal gods. It was
but natural that these wild religions should be connected
with magic and its kindred arts ; magic has at all times
led to cruelty, and licentiousness would be the inevitable
reaction from a temporary strictness. An extraordinary
profession, when men are in a state of mere nature, makes
hypocrites or madmen, and will in no long time be discarded
except by the few. The world of that day associated
together in one company, Isiac, Phrygian, Mithriac,
Chaldean, wizard, astrologer, fortune-teller, itinerant, and,
as was not unnatural, Jew. Magic was professed by the
profligate Alexander, and, was imputed to the grave Apol-
lonius. The rites of Mithras came from the Magi of Persia ;
and it is obviously difficult to distinguish in principle the
ceremonies of the Syrian Taurobolium from those of the
Necyomantia in the Odyssey, or of Canidia in Horace.
4 Apol. 25. Vid. also Prudent, in hon. Eomani, circ. fin. and Lucian de
Deo Syr. 50.
5 Vid. also the scene in Jul. Firm. p. 449.
216 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
The Theodosian Code calls magic generally a " supersti-
tion;" and magic, orgies, mysteries, and " sabbathizings,"
were referred to the same " barbarous " origin. " Magical
superstitions/' the "rites of the Magi/' the "promises of
the Chaldeans," and the " Mathematici," are familiar to
the readers of Tacitus. The Emperor Otho, an avowed
patron of oriental fashions, took part in the rites of Isis,
and consulted the Mathematici. Vespasian, who also con-
sulted them, is heard of in Eg}^pt as performing miracles
at the suggestion of Serapis. Tiberius, in an edict, classes
together " Egyptian and Jewish rites ;" and Tacitus and
Suetonius, in recording it, speak of the two religions to-
gether as " ea superstitio" 6 Augustus had already associ-
ated them together as superstitions, and as unlawful, and
that in contrast to others of a like foreign origin. " As to
foreign rites (peregrince ceremonies)/' says Suetonius, "as he
paid more reverence to those which were old and enjoined,
so did he hold the rest in contempt." 7 He goes on to say
that, even on the judgment-seat, he had recognized the
Eleusinian priests, into whose myteries he had been initi-
ated at Athens ; " whereas, when travelling in Egypt, he
had refused to see Apis, and had approved of his grandson
Caligula's passing by Judaea without sacrificing at Jeru-
salem." Plutarch speaks of magic as connected with the
mournful mysteries of Orpheus and Zoroaster, with the
Egyptian and the Phrygian ; and, in his Treatise on
Superstition, he puts together in one clause, as specimens
of that disease of mind, " covering oneself with mud,
wallowing in the mire, sabbathizings, fallings on the face,
unseemly postures, foreign adorations." Ovid mentions
in consecutive verses the rites of " Adonis lamented by
Yenus," "The Sabbath of the Syrian Jew," and the
" Memphitic Temple of lo in her linen dress." Juvenal
6 Tac. Ann. ii. 85 ; Sueton. Tiber. 36. 7 August. 93.
8 De Superst. 3. De Art. Am. i. init.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 217
speaks of the rites, as well as the language and the music,
of the Syrian Orontes having flooded Rome ; and, in his
description of the superstition of the Roman women, he
places the low Jewish fortune-teller between the pompous
priests of Cybele and Isis, and the bloody witchcraft of
the Armenian haruspex and the astrology of the
Chaldeans.1
8.
The Christian, being at first accounted a kind of Jew,
was even on that score included in whatever odium, and
whatever bad associations, attended on the Jewish name.
But in a little time his independence of the rejected people
was clearly understood, as even the persecutions show ; and
he stood upon his own ground. Still his character did not
change in the eyes of the world ; for favour or for reproach,
he was still associated with the votaries of secret and magi-
cal rites. The Emperor Hadrian, noted as he is for his
inquisitive temper, and a partaker in so many mysteries,2
still believed that the Christians of Egypt allowed them-
selves in the worship of Serapis. They are brought into
connexion with the magic of Egypt in the history of what
is commonly called the Thundering Legion, so far as this,
that the rain which relieved the Emperor's army in the
field, and which the Church ascribed to the prayers of
the Christian soldiers, is by Dio Cassius attributed to an
Egyptian magician, who obtained it by invoking Mercury
and other spirits. This war had been the occasion of one
of the first recognitions which the state had conceded to
the Oriental rites, though statesmen and emperors, as
private men, had long taken part in them. The Emperor
Marcus had been urged by his fears of the Marcomanni to
resort to these foreign introductions, and is said to have
employed Magi and Chaldeans in averting an unsuccessful
1 Sat. iii. vi. 2 Tertul. Ap. 5.
218 THE CHTJKCH OF [CH. VI.
issue of the war. It is observable that, in the growing
countenance which was extended to these rites in the
third century, Christianity came in for a share. The chapel
of Alexander Severus contained statues of Abraham,
Orpheus, Apollonius, Pythagoras, and our Lord. Here
indeed, as in the case of Zenobia's Judaism, an eclectic
philosophy aided the comprehension of religions. But,
immediately before Alexander, Heliogabalus, who was no
philosopher, while he formally seated his Syrian idol in
the Palatine, while he observed the mysteries of Cybele
and Adonis, and celebrated his magic rites with human
victims, intended also, according to Lampridius, to unite
with his horrible superstition " the Jewish and Samaritan
religions and the Christian rite, that so the priesthood of
Heliogabalus might comprise the mystery of every
worship."' Hence, more or less, the stories which occur
in ecclesiastical history of the conversion or good-will
of the emperors to the Christian faith, of Hadrian,
Mammsea, and others, besides Heliogabalus and Alexander.
Such stories might often mean little more than that they
favoured it among other forms of Oriental superstition.
9.
What has been said is sufficient to bring before the
mind an historical fact, which indeed does not need
evidence. Upon the established religions of Europe the
East had renewed her encroachments, and was pouring
forth a family of rites which in various ways attracted the
attention of the luxurious, the political, the ignorant, the
restless, and the remorseful. Armenian, Chaldee, Egyp-
tian, Jew, Syrian, Phrygian, as the case might be, was
the designation of the new hierophant; and magic,
superstition, barbarism, jugglery, were the names given
to his rite by the world. In this company appeared
3 Vit. Hel. 3.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 219
Christianity. When then three well-informed writers
call Christianity a superstition and a magical superstition ,
they were not using words at random, or the language of
abuse, but they were describing it in distinct and recog-
nized terms as cognate to those gloomy, secret, odious,
disreputable religions which were making so much dis-
turbance up and down the empire.
10.
The impression made on the world by circumstances
immediately before the rise of Christianity received a sort of
confirmation upon its rise, in the appearance of the Gnostic
and kindred heresies, which issued from the Church during
the second and third centuries. Their resemblance in
ritual and constitution to the Oriental religions, sometimes
their historical relationship, is undeniable ; and certainly
it is a singular coincidence, that Christianity should be
first called a magical superstition by Suetonius, and then
should be found in the intimate company, and seemingly
the parent, of a multitude of magical superstitions, if there
was nothing in the Religion itself to give rise to such a
charge.
11.
The Gnostic family4 suitably traces its origin to a mixed
race, which had commenced its national history by associat-
ing Orientalism with Revelation. After the captivity of the
ten tribes, Samaria was colonized by " men from Babylon
and Cushan, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from
Sepharvaim," who were instructed at their own instance
in " the manner of the God of the land/' by one of the
priests of the Church of Jeroboam. The consequence
was, that " they feared the Lord and served their own
4 Vid. Tillemont, Mem. and Lardner's Hist. Heretics.
220 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
gods." Of this country was Simon, the reputed patriarch
of the Gnostics ; and he is introduced in the Acts of the
Apostles as professing tho^e magical powers which were
so principal a characteristic of the Oriental mysteries.
His heresy, though broken into a multitude of sects, was
poured over the world with a Catholicity not inferior in
its day to that of Christianity. St. Peter, who fell in with
him originally in Samaria, seems to have encountered him
again at Rome. At Rome, St. Polycarp met Marcion of
Pontus, whose followers spread through Italy, Egypt,
Syria, Arabia, and Persia ; Yalentinus preached his
doctrines in Alexandria, Rome, and Cyprus ; and we read
of his disciples in Crete, Caesarea, Antioch, and other parts
of the East. Bardesanes and his followers were found in
Mesopotamia. The Carpocratians are spoken of at Alexan-
dria, at Rome, and in Cephallenia ; the Basilidians spread
through the greater part of Egypt; the Ophites were
apparently in Bithynia and Galatia ; the Cainites or
Caians in Africa, and the Marcosians in Gaul. To these
must be added several sects, which, though not strictly of
the Gnostic stock, are associated with them in date,
character, and origin ; — the Ebionites of Palestine, the
Cerinthians, who rose in some part of Asia Minor, the
Encratites and kindred sects, who spread from Mesopotamia
to Syria, to Cilicia and other provinces of Asia Minor, and
thence to Rome, Gaul, Aquitaine, and Spain ; and the
Montanists, who, with a town in Phrygia for their
metropolis, reached at length from Constantinople to
Carthage.
" When [the reader of Christian history] comes to the
second century," says Dr. Burton, " he finds that Gnosti-
cism, under some form or other, was professed in every
part of the then civilized world. He finds it divided into
schools, as numerously and as zealously attended as any
which Greece or Asia could boast in their happiest days.
SECT. 1.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 221
He meets with names totally unknown to him before, which
excited as much sensation as those of Aristotle or Plato.
He hears of volumes having been written in support of this
new philosophy, not one of which has survived to our own
day." s Many of the founders of these sects had been
Christians ; others were of Jewish parentage ; others were
more or less connected in fact with the Pagan rites to
which their own bore so great a resemblance. Montanus
seems even to have been a mutilated priest of Cybele ; the
followers of Prodicus professed to possess the secret books
of Zoroaster ; and the doctrine of dualism, which so many
of the sects held, is to be traced to the same source.
Basilides seems to have recognized Mithras as the Supreme
Being, or the Prince of Angels, or the Sun, if Mithras is
equivalent to Abraxas, which was inscribed upon his
amulets : on the other hand, he is said to have been
taught by an immediate disciple of St. Peter, and Valen-
tinus by an immediate disciple of St. Paul. Marcion was
the son of a Bishop of Pontus ; Tatian, a disciple of St.
Justin Martyr.
12.
"Whatever might be the history of these sects, and
though it may be a question whether they can be properly
called '• superstitions," and though many of them numbered
educated men among their teachers and followers, they
closely resembled, at least in ritual and profession, the
vagrant Pagan mysteries which have been above described.
Their very name of " Gnostic " implied the possession of
a secret, which was to be communicated to their disciples.
Ceremonial observances were the preparation, and sym-
bolical rites the instrument, of initiation. Tatian and
Montanus, the representatives of very distinct schools,
agreed in making asceticism a rule of life. The followers
5 Bampton Lect. 2.
222 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
of each of these sectaries abstained from wine; the
Tatianites and Marcionites, from flesh ; the Montanists
kept three Lents in the year. All the Gnostic sects
seem to have condemned marriage on one or other
reason.6 The Marcionites had three baptisms or more ;
the Marcosians had two rites of what they called redemp-
tion ; the latter of these was celebrated as a marriage,
and the room adorned as a marriage-chamber. A con-
secration to a priesthood then followed with anointing.
An extreme unction was another of their rites, and
prayers for the dead one of their observances. Barde-
sanes and Harmonius were famous for the beauty of their
chants. The prophecies of Montanus were delivered,
like the oracles of the heathen, in a state of enthusiasm or
ecstasy. To Epiphanes, the son of Carpocrates, who
died at the age of seventeen, a temple was erected in the
island of Cephallenia, his mother's birthplace, where he
was celebrated with hymns and sacrifices. A similar
honour was paid by the Carpocratians to Homer, Pytha-
goras, Plato, Aristotle, as well as to the Apostles ; crowns
were placed upon their images, and incense burned before
them. In one of the inscriptions found at Gyrene, about
twenty years since, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Epicurus, and
others, are put together with our Lord, as guides of con-
duct. These inscriptions also contain the Carpocratian
tenet of a community of women. I am unwilling to
allude to the Agapaa and Communions of certain of these
sects, which were not surpassed in profligacy by the
Pagan rites of which they were an imitation. The very
name of Gnostic became an expression for the worst
impurities, and no one dared eat bread with them, or use
their culinary instruments or plates.
6 Burton, Bampton Lect. note 61.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 223
13.
These profligate excesses are found in connexion with the
exercise of magic and astrology.7 The amulets of the
Basilidians are still extant in great numbers, inscribed
with symbols, some Christian, some with figures of Isis,
Serapis, and Anubis, represented according to the gross
indecencies of the Egyptian mythology.8 St. Irenseus
had already connected together the two crimes in speak-
ing of the Simonians : " Their mystical priests," he says,
"live in lewdness, and practise magic, according to the
ability of each. They use exorcisms and incantations ;
love-potions too, and seductive spells ; the virtue of
spirits, and dreams, and all other curious arts, they
diligently observe." 9 The Marcosians were especially
devoted to these " curious arts," which are also ascribed
to Carpocrates and Apelles. Marcion and others are
reported to have used astrology. Tertullian speaks
generally of the sects of his day : " Infamous are the
dealings of the heretics with sorcerers very many, with
mountebanks, with astrologers, with philosophers, to wit,
such as are given to curious questions. They everywhere
remember, ' Seek, and ye shall find/ 3
Such were the Gnostics ; and to external and prejudiced
spectators, whether philosophers, as Celsus and Porphyry,
or the multitude, they wore an appearance sufficiently like
the Church to be mistaken for her in the latter part of
the Ante-nicene period, as she was confused with the
Pagan mysteries in the earlier.
14.
Of course it may happen that the common estimate
concerning a person or a body is purely accidental and
7 Burton, Bampton Lect. note 44.
8 Montfaucon, Antiq. t. ii. part 2, p. 353.
9 Hffir. i. 20. l De Prsescr. 43.
224 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
unfounded; but in such cases it is not lasting. Such
were the calumnies of child-eating and impurity in the
Christian meetings, which were almost extinct by the
time of Origen, and which might arise from the world's
confusing them with the pagan and heretical rites. But
when it continues from age to age, it is certainly an index
of a fact, and corresponds to definite qualities in the
object to which it relates. In that case, even mistakes
carry information ; for they are cognate to the truth, and
we can allow for them. Often what seems like a mistake
is merely the mode in which the informant conveys his
testimony, or the impression which a fact makes on him.
Censure is the natural tone of one man in a case where
praise is the natural tone of another; the very same
character or action inspires one mind with enthusiasm,
and another with contempt. What to one man is mag-
nanimity, to another is romance, and pride to a third, and
pretence to a fourth, while to a fifth it is simply unin-
telligible; and yet there is a certain analogy in their
separate testimonies, which conveys to us what the thing
is like and what it is not like. When a man's acknow-
ledged note is superstition, we may be pretty sure we
shall not find him an Academic or an Epicurean ; and
even words which are ambiguous, as " atheist," or " re-
former," admit of a sure interpretation when we are
informed of the speaker. In like manner, there is a
certain general correspondence between magic and miracle,
obstinacy and faith, insubordination and zeal for religion,
sophistry and argumentative talent, craft and meekness,
as is obvious. Let us proceed then in our contemplation
of this reflexion, as it may be called of primitive Chris-
tianity in the mirror of the world.
15.
All three writers, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny, call it
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 225
a " superstition ;" this is no accidental imputation, but
is repeated by a variety of subsequent writers and speak-
ers. The charge of Thyestean banquets scarcely lasts a
hundred years ; but, while pagan witnesses are to be
found, the Church is accused of superstition. The
heathen disputant in Minucius calls Christianity, " Tana
et demens superstitio." The lawyer Modestinus speaks,
with an apparent allusion to Christianity, of " weak minds
being terrified superstitione numinis" The heathen
magistrate asks St. Marcellus, whether he and others
have put away "vain superstitions," and worship the
gods whom the emperors worship. The Pagans in Arno-
bius speak of Christianity as " an execrable and unlucky
religion, full of impiety and sacrilege, contaminating the
rites instituted from of old with the superstition of its
novelty." The anonymous opponent of Lactantius calls
it, " Impia et anilis super Mio" Diocletian's inscription
at Clunia was, as it declared, on occasion of " the total
extinction of the superstition of the Christians, and the
extension of the worship of the gods." Maximin, in his
Letter upon Constantino's Edict, still calls it a supersti-
tion.2
16.
Now what is meant by the word thus attached by a
consensus of heathen authorities to Christianity ? At least,
it cannot mean a religion in which a man might think
what he pleased, and was -set free from all yokes, whether
of ignorance, fear, authority, or priestcraft. When
heathen writers call the Oriental rites superstitions, they
evidently use the word in its modern sense ; it cannot surely
be doubted that they apply it in the same sense to Chris-
tianity. But Plutarch explains for us the word at length,
- Vid. Kortholt, in Plin. et Traj. Epp. p. 152. Comment, in Minuc.
F. &c.
226 THE CHURCH OF [CH. YT.
in his Treatise which bears the name : " Of all kinds of
fear/' he says, " superstition is the most fatal to action
and resource. He does not fear the sea who does not sail,
nor war who does not serve, nor robbers who keeps at home,
nor the sycophant who is poor, nor the envious if he is a
private man, nor an earthquake if he lives in Gaul, nor
thunder if he lives in Ethiopia ; but he who fears the gods
fears everything, earth, seas, air, sky, darkness, light,
noises, silence, sleep. Slaves sleep and forget their
masters ; of the fettered doth sleep lighten the chain ;
inflamed wounds, ulcers cruel and agonizing, are not felt by
the sleeping. Superstition alone has come to no terms
with sleep ; but in the very sleep of her victims, as though
they were in the realms of the impious, she raises horrible
spectres, and monstrous phantoms, and various pains, and
whirls the miserable soul about, and persecutes it. They
rise, and, instead of making light of what is unreal, they
fall into the hands of quacks and conjurers, who say, ' Call
the crone to expiate, bathe in the sea, and sit all day on
the ground/ ' He goes on to speak of the introduction of
" uncouth names and barbarous terms " into " the divine
and national authority of religion ;" observes that, whereas
slaves, when they despair of freedom, may demand to be
sold to another master, superstition admits of no change
of gods, since " the god cannot be found whom he will not
fear, who fears the gods of his family and his birth, who
shudders at the Saving and the Benignant, who has a
trembling and dread at those from whom we ask riches
and wealth, concord, peace, success of all good words and
deeds." He says, moreover, that, while death is to all
men an end of life, it is not so to the superstitious ; for
then " there are deep gates of hell to yawn, and headlong
streams of at once fire and gloom are opened, and darkness
with its many phantoms encompasses, ghosts presenting
horrid visages and wretched voices, and judges and
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 227
executioners, and chasms and dens full of innumerable
miseries."
Presently, lie says, that in misfortune or sickness the
superstitious man refuses to see physician or philosopher,
and cries, " Suffer me, 0 man, to undergo punishment, the
impious, the cursed, the hated of gods and spirits. The
Atheist," with whom all along he is contrasting the super-
stitious disadvantageously, "wipes his tears, trims his
hair, doffs his mourning ; but how can you address, how
help the superstitious ? He sits apart in sackcloth or
filthy rags ; and often he strips himself and rolls in the
mud, and tells out his sins and offences, as having eaten
and drunken something, or walked some way which the
divinity did not allow. . . . And in his best mood, and
under the influence of a good-humoured superstition, he
sits at home, with sacrifice and slaughter all round him,
while the old crones hang on him as on a peg, as Bion
says, any charm they fall in with." He continues,
"What men like best are festivals, banquets at the
temples, initiations, orgies, votive prayers, and adorations.
But the superstitious wishes indeed, but is unable to rejoice.
He is crowned and turns pale ; he sacrifices and is in fear ;
he prays with a quivering voice, and burns incense with
trembling hands, and altogether belies the saying of
Pythagoras, that we are then in best case when we go to
the gods ; for superstitious men fare most wretchedly and
evilly, approaching the houses or shrines of the gods as if
they were the dens of bears, or the holes of snakes, or the
caves of whales."
17.
Here we have a vivid picture of Plutarch's idea of the
essence of Superstition ; it was the imagination of the
existence of an unseen ever-present Master ; the bondage
of a rule of life, of a continual responsibility ; obligation
Q 2
228 THE CHURCH OF [ciI. VI.
to attend to little things, the impossibility of escaping from
duty, the inability to choose or change one's religion,
an interference with the enjoyment of life, a melancholy
view of the world, sense of sin, horror at guilt, appre-
hension of punishment, dread, self-abasement, depression,
anxiety and endeavour to be at peace with heaven, and
error and absurdity in the methods chosen for the purpose.
Such too had been the idea of the Epicurean Velleius,
when he shrunk with horror from the " sempiternm
dominus " and " curiosus Deus " of the Stoics.3 Such,
surely, was the meaning of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Plinv.
And hence of course the frequent reproach cast on Christians
as credulous, weak-minded, and poor-spirited. The heathen
objectors in Minucius and Lactantius speak of their "old-
woman's tales." 4 Celsus accuses them of " assenting at
random and without reason," saying, " Do not inquire,
but believe." " They lay it down/' he says elsewhere,
" Let no educated man approach, no man of wisdom, no
man of sense ; but if a man be unlearned, weak in intellect,
an infant, let him come with confidence. Confessing that
these are worthjr of their God, they evidently desire, as
they are able, to convert none but fools, and vulgar, and
stupid, and slavish, women and boys." They "take in
the simple, and lead him where they will." They address
themselves to " youths, house- servants, and the weak in
intellect/' They " hurry away from the educated, as not
fit subjects of their imposition, and inveigle the rustic." 5
" Thou," says the heathen magistrate to the Martyr
Fructuosus, " who as a teacher dost disseminate a new
3 " Itaque imposuistis in cervicibus nostris senipiternum dorninum, quern
dies et noctes timeremus ; quis enim uon timeat omuia providentem et
cogitantem et animadvertentem et omnia ad se pertinere putantern, curiosum,
et plenum negotii Deum ? " — Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 20.
4 Min. c. ll. Lact. v. 1, 2, vid. Arnob. ii. 8, &c.
5 Origen, contr. Cels. i. 9, iii. 44, 50, vi. 44.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 229
fable, that fickle girls may desert the groves and abandon
Jupiter ; condemn, if thou art wise, the anile creed/'' 6
18.
Hence the epithets of itinerant, mountebank, conjurer,
cheat, sophist, sorcerer, heaped upon the teachers of
Christianity ; sometimes to account for the report or
apparent truth of their miracles, sometimes to explain their
success. Our Lord was said to have learned His miracu-
lous power in Egypt ; " wizard, mediciner, cheat, rogue,
conjurer," were the epithets applied to Him by the oppo-
nents of Eusebius ; 7 they " worship that crucified sophist/'
says Lucian ; 8 " Paul, who surpasses all the conjurers and
impostors who ever lived,'7 is Julian's account of the
Apostle. " You have sent through the whole world,"
says St. Justin to Trypho, " to preach that a certain
atheistic and lawless sect has sprung from one Jesus, a
Galilean cheat." ! " We know," says Lucian, speaking
of Chaldeans and Magicians, "the Syrian from Palestine,
who is the sophist in these matters, how many lunatics,
with eyes distorted and mouth in foam, he raises and sends
away restored, ridding them from the evil at a great
price." 1 " If any conjurer came to them, a man of skill
and knowing how to manage matters," says the same
writer, " he made money in no time, with a broad grin at
the simple fellows." The officer who had custody of St.
Perpetua feared her escape from prison " by magical in-
cantations." 3 When St., Tiburtius had walked barefoot
on hot coals, his judge cried out that Christ had taught
him magic. St. Anastasia was thrown into prison as a
mediciner; the populace called out against St. Agnes,
"Away with the witch," Tolle magam, tolle maleficam.
6 Prudent, in hon. Fruct. 37. 7 Evan. Dem. iii. 3, 4.
s Mort. Peregr. 13. 9 c. 108. a i. e. Philop. 16.
2 De Mort. Pereg. ibid. 3 Ruin. Mart. pp. 100, 594, &c.
230 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
When St. Bonosus and St. Maximilian bore the burning
pitch without shrinking, Jews and Gentiles cried out, Isti
magi et malefici. " What new delusion/'' says the heathen
magistrate concerning St. B/omanus, " has brought in these
sophists to deny the worship of the gods ? How doth this
chief sorcerer mock us, skilled by his Thessalian charm
(carmine) to laugh at punishment."
Hence we gather the meaning of the word " carmen " as
used by Pliny; when he speaks of the Christians "saying
with one another a carmen to Christ as to a god," he-meant
pretty much what Suetonius expresses by the " malefico,
superstitio" 5 And the words of the last-mentioned writer
and Tacitus are still more exactly, and, I may say, singu-
larly illustrated by clauses which occur in the Theodosian
code ; which seem to show that these historians were using
formal terms and phrases to express their notion of Chris-
tianity. For instance, Tacitus says, " Quos per flagitia
invisos, vulgus Christianas appelldbat ;" and the Law against
the Malefici and Mathematici in the Code speaks of those,
f< Quos obfacinorum magnitudinem vulgus maleficos appellat"*
Again, Tacitus charges Christians with the " odium humani
generis :" this is the very characteristic of a practiser in
magic ; the Laws call the Malefici, " humani generis hostes/'
t( humani generis inimici" " naturce peregrini," " communis
salutis hostes" 7
4 Prud. in hon. Rom. vv. 404, 868.
5 We have specimens of carmina ascribed to Christians in the Philopatris.
6 Goth, in Cod. Th. t. 5, p. 120, ed. 1665. Again, " Qui malefici vulgi
consuetudine nuncupantur." Leg. 6. So Lactantius, " Magi et ii quos
vere maleficos vulgus appellat." Inst. ij. 17. " Quos et maleficos vulgus
appellat." August. Civ. Dei, x. 19. " Quos vulgns matheniaticos vocat."
Hieron. in Dan. c. ij. Vid. Gothof. in loc. Other laws speak of those who
were " maleficiorum labe polluti," and of the " maleficiorum scabies."
7 Tertullian too mentions the charge of " hostes principum Rornanorum,
populi, generis humani, Deorum, Imperatorum, legum, morum, naturae
totius inimici." Apol. 2, 35, 38, ad. Sea p. 4, ad. Nat. i. 17.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 231
19.
This also explains the phenomenon, which has created
so much surprise to certain moderns ; — that a grave, well-
informed historian like Tacitus should apply to Christians
what sounds like abuse. Yet what is the difficulty,
supposing that Christians were considered mathematici
and magi, and these were the secret intriguers against
established government, the resort of desperate politicians,
the enemies of the established religion, the disseminators
of lying rumours, the perpetrators of poisonings and other
crimes ? " Read this," says Paley, after quoting some
of the most beautiful and subduing passages of St. Paul,
" read this, and then think of exitiabilis super 'stitio ;" and
he goes on to express a wish " in contending with heathen
authorities, to produce our books against theirs," 8 as if it
were a matter of books. Public men care very little for
books ; the finest sentiments, the most luminous philosophy,
the deepest theology, inspiration itself, moves them but
little ; they look at facts, and care only for facts. The ques-
tion was, What was the worth, what the tendency of the
Christian body in the State ? what Christians said, what
they thought, was little to the purpose. They might
exhort to peaceableness and passive obedience as strongly
as words could speak ; but what did they do, what was
their political position ? This is what statesmen thought
of then, as they do now. What had men of the world to
do with abstract proofs^ or first principles ? a statesman
measures parties, and sects, and writers by their bearing
upon Mm; and he has a practised eye in this sort of
judgment, and is not likely to be mistaken. " ' What is
Truth ? ' said jesting Pilate/' Apologies, however elo-
quent or true, availed nothing with the Roman magis-
trate against the sure instinct which taught him to dread
8 Evid. part ii. ch. 4.
232 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
Christianity. It was a dangerous enemy to any power not
built upon itself; he felt it, and the event justified his
apprehension.
20,
"We must not forget the well-known character of the
Roman state in its dealings with its subjects. It had had
from the first an extreme jealousy of secret societies ; it
was prepared to grant a large toleration and a broad
comprehension, but, as is the case with modern govern-
ments, it wished to have jurisdiction and the ultimate
authority in every movement of the body politic and social,
and its civil institutions were based, or essentially
depended, on its religion. Accordingly, every innovation
upon the established paganism, except it was allowed by
the law, was rigidly repressed. Hence the professors of
low superstitions, of mysteries, of magic, of astrology,
were the outlaws of society, and were in a condition
analogous, if the comparison may be allowed, to smugglers
or poachers among ourselves, or perhaps to burglars and
highwaymen. The modern robber is sometimes made to
ask in novels or essays, why the majority of a people should
bind the minority, and why he is amenable to laws which
he does not enact ; but the magistrate, relying on the
power of the sword, wishes all men to gain a living indeed,
and to prosper, but only in his own legally sanctioned
ways, and he hangs or transports dissenters from his
authority. The Romans applied this rule to religion.
Lardner protests against Pliny's application of the words
" contumacy and inflexible obstinacy " to the Christians
of Pontus. " Indeed, these are hard words/' he says,
" very improperly applied to men who were open to con-
viction, and willing to satisfy others, if they might have
leave to speak." And he says, " It seems to me that
9 Heathen Test. 9.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 233
Pliny acted very arbitrarily and unrighteously, in his
treatment of the Christians in his province. What right
had Pliny to act in this manner ? by what law or laws did
he punish [them] with death ? " — but the Romans had
ever burnt the sorcerer, and banished his consulters for
life.1 It was an ancient custom. And at mysteries they
looked with especial suspicion, because, since the established
religion did not include them in its provisions, they really
did supply what may be called a demand of the age. The
Greeks of an earlier day had naturalized among themselves
the Eleusinian and other mysteries, which had come from
Egypt and Syria, and had little to fear from a fresh
invasion from the same quarter ; yet even in Greece, as
Plutarch tells us, the " carmina " of the itinerants of
Cybele and Serapis threw the Pythian verses out of fashion,
and henceforth the responses from the temple were given
in prose. Soon the oracles altogether ceased. What
would cause in the Roman mind still greater jealousy of
Christianity was the general infidelity which prevailed
among all classes about the mythological fables of Charon,
Cerberus, and the realms of punishment.2
21.
We know what opposition had been made in Rome
even to the philosophy of Greece ; much greater would be
the aversion of constitutional statesmen and lawyers to the
ritual of barbarians. Religion was the Roman point of
honour. " Spaniards might rival them in numbers," says
Cicero, "Gauls in bodily strength, Carthaginians in
address, Greeks in the arts, Italians and Latins in native
talent, but the Romans surpassed all nations in piety and
1 Gothof. in Cod. Th. t. 5, p. 121.
2 Cic. pro Cluent. 61. Gieseler transl. vol. i. p. 21, note 5. Acad. Inscr.
t. 34. hist. p. 110.
2M THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
devotion." 3 It was one of their laws, "Let no one have
gods by himself, nor worship in private new gods nor
adventitious, unless added on public authority." Luta-
tius,5 at the end of the first Punic war, was forbidden by
the senate to consult the Sortes Pramestinse as being
" auspicia alienigena" Some years afterwards the Consul
took axe in hand, and commenced the destruction of the
temples of Isis and Serapis. In the second Punic war, the
senate had commanded the surrender of the libri vaticini
or precationes, and any written art of sacrificing. When
a secret confraternity was discovered, at a later date, the
Consul spoke of the rule of their ancestors which forbade
the forum, circus, and city to Sacrificuli and prophets, and
burnt their books. In the next age banishment was in-
flicted on individuals who were introducing the worship of
the Syrian Sabazius ; and in the next the Iseion and
Serapeion were destroyed a second time. Maecenas in Dio
advises Augustus to honour the gods according to the
national custom, because the contempt of the country's
deities leads to civil insubordination, reception of foreign
laws, conspiracies, and secret meetings.6 " Suffer no one/'
he adds, " to deny the gods or to practise sorcery." The
civilian Julius Paulus lays it down as one of the leading
principles of Roman Law, that those who introduce new
or untried religions should be degraded, and if in the
lower orders put to death.7 In like manner, it is enacted
in one of Constantino's Laws that the Haruspices should
not exercise their art in private ; and there is a law of
Yalentinian's against nocturnal sacrifices or magic. It is
more immediately to our purpose that Trajan had been so
earnest in his resistance to Hetcerice or secret societies,
that, when a fire had laid waste Nicomedia, and Pliny
3 De Harusp. Resp. 9. 4 De Legg. ii. 8.
5 Acad. Inscr. ibid. 6 Neander, Eccl. Hist. tr. vol. i. p. 81.
7 Muller, p. 21, 22, 30. Tertull. Ox. tr. p. 12, note p.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 235
proposed to him to incorporate a body of a hundred and
fifty firemen in consequence/ he was afraid of the prece-
dent and forbade it.
22.
What has been said will suggest another point of view
in which the Oriental rites were obnoxious to the govern-
ment, viz., as being vagrant and proselytizing religions.
If it tolerated foreign superstitions, this would be on the
ground that districts or countries within its jurisdiction
held them ; to proselytize to a rite hitherto unknown, to
form a new party, and to propagate it through the
Empire, — a religion not local but Catholic, — was an offence
against both order and reason. The state desired peace
everywhere, and no change ; " considering," according to
Lactantius, "that they were rightly and deservedly
punished who execrated the public religion handed down
to them by their ancestors." !
It is impossible surely to deny that, in assembling for
religious purposes, the Christians were breaking a solemn
law, a vital principle of the Roman constitution ; and this
is the light in which their conduct was regarded by the
historians and philosophers of the Empire. This was a
very strong act on the part of the disciples of the great
Apostle, who had enjoined obedience to the powers that
be. Time after time they resisted the authority of the
magistrate ; and this is a phenomenon inexplicable on the
theory of Private Judgment or of the Voluntary Principle.
The justification of such disobedience lies simply in the
necessity of obeying the higher authority of some divine
law ; but if Christianity were in its essence only private
and personal, as so many now think, there was no
necessity of their meeting together at all. If, on the
other hand, in assembling for worship and holy com-
8 Gibbon, Hist. ch. 16, note 14. 9 Epit. Instit. 55.
236 THE CHURCH OF [cH. VI.
munion, they were fulfilling an indispensable observance,
Christianity has imposed a social law on the world, and
formally enters the field of politics. Gibbon says that, in
consequence of Pliny's edict, " the prudence of the Chris-
tians suspended their Agapse ; but it was impossible for
them to omit the exercise of public worship." * We can
draw no other conclusion.
23.
At the end of three hundred years,, a more remarkable
violation of law seems to have been admitted by the Chris-
tian body. It shall be given in the words of Dr. Burton ;
he has been speaking of Maximin's edict, which provided for
the restitution of any of their lands or buildings which had
been alienated from them. " It is plain," he says, " from
the terms of this edict, that the Christians had for some
time been in possession of property. It speaks of houses
and lands which did not belong to individuals, but to the
whole body. Their possession of such property could
hardly have escaped the notice of the government ; but
it seems to have been held in direct violation of a law of
Diocletian, which prohibited corporate bodies, or associa-
tions which were not legally recognized, from acquiring
property. The Christians were certainly not a body re-
cognized by law at the beginning of the reign of
Diocletian, and it might almost be thought that this
enactment was specially directed against them. But, like
other laws which are founded upon tyranny; and are at
variance with the first principles of justice, it is probable
that this law about corporate property was evaded. We
must suppose that the Christians had purchased lands
and houses before the law was passed ; and their disregard
1 Gibbon, ibid. Origen admits and defends the violation of the laws :
OVK &\oyov ffvv64}K.as Trapa TO v€i/o(j.tff/j.fva Trote?^, ray virep aXrjOelas. c.
Cels. i. 1.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 237
of the prohibition may be taken as another proof that
their religion had now taken so firm a footing that the
executors of the laws were obliged to connive at their
being broken by so numerous a body/' 2
24.
No wonder that the magistrate who presided at the
martyrdom of St. Romanus calls them in Prudentius " a
rebel people ;" that Galerius speaks of them as "a
nefarious conspiracy;" the heathen in Minucius, as
" men of a desperate faction ;" that others make them
guilty of sacrilege and treason, and call them by those
other titles which, more closely resembling the language
of Tacitus, have been noticed above. Hence the violent
accusations against them as the destruction of the
Empire, the authors of physical evils, and the cause of
the anger of the gods.
" Men cry out," says Tertullian, " that the state is beset,
that the Christians are in their fields, in their forts, in,
their islands. They mourn as for a loss that every sex,
condition, and now even rank, is going over to this sect.
And yet they do not by this very means advance their
minds to the idea of some good therein hidden ; they
allow not themselves to conjecture more rightly, they
choose not to examine more closely. The generality run
upon a hatred of this name, with eyes so closed that in
bearing favourable testimony to any one they mingle
with it the reproach of the name. ' A good man Caius
Seius, only he is a Christian.' So another, 'I marvel
that that wise man Lucius Titius hath suddenly become a
Christian/ No one reflecteth whether Caius be not there-
fore good and Lucius wise because a Christian, or therefore
a Christian because wise and good. They praise that
2 Hist. p. 418.
3 In hou. Rom. 62, In Act. S. Cypr. 4, Tert. Apol. 10, &c.
238 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
which they know, they revile that which they know not.
Virtue is not in such account as hatred of the Chris-
tians. ISTow, then, if the hatred be of the name, what
guilt is there in names ? What charge against words ?
Unless it be that any word which is a name have either a
barbarous or ill-omened, or a scurrilous or an immodest
sound. If the Tiber cometh up to the walls, if the Nile
cometh not up to the fields, if the heaven hath stood still,
if the earth hath been moved, if there be any famine, if
any pestilence, f The Christians to the lions ' is forthwith
the word." 4
25.
" Men of a desperate, lawless, reckless faction," says the
heathen Caecilius, in the passage above referred to, "who
collect together out of the lowest rabble the thoughtless
portion, and credulous women seduced by the weakness of
their sex, and form a mob of impure conspirators, of whom
nocturnal assemblies, and solemn fastings, and unnatural
food, no sacred rite but pollution, is the bond. A tribe
lurking and light-hating, dumb for the public, talkative in
corners ; they despise our temples as if graves, spit at our
gods, deride our religious forms ; pitiable themselves, the}*-
pity, forsooth, our priests ; half-naked themselves, they
despise our honours and purple ; monstrous folly and
incredible impudence ! . . . Day after day, their aban-
doned morals wind their serpentine course ; over the whole
world are those most hideous rites of an impious association
growing into shape : . . . they recognize each other by
marks and signs, and love each other almost before they
recognize ; promiscuous lust is their religion. Thus does
their vain and mad superstition glory in crimes. . . The
writer who tells the story of a criminal capitally punished,
and of the gibbet (ligna feralia) of the cross being their
4 Apol. i. 3, 39, Oxf. tr.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 239
observance (ceremonias), assigns to them thereby an altar
in keeping with the abandoned and wicked, that they may
worship (colant) what they merit. . . . Why their mighty
effort to hide and shroud whatever it is they worship
(colunf), since things honest ever like the open day, and
crimes are secret ? Why have they no altars, no temples,
no images known to us, never speak abroad, never assemble
freely, were it not that what they worship and suppress is
subject either of punishment or of shame ? . . What
monstrous, what portentous notions do they fabricate !
that that God of theirs, whom they can neither show nor
see, should be inquiring diligently into the characters, the
acts, nay the words and secret thoughts of all men ;
running to and fro, forsooth, and present everywhere,
troublesome, restless, nay impudently curious they would
have him ; that is, if he is close at every deed,
interferes in all places, while he can neither attend to
each as being distracted through the whole, nor suffice for
the whole as being engaged about each. Think too of
their threatening fire, meditating destruction to the whole
earth, nay the world itself with its stars ! . . . Nor content
with this mad opinion, they add and append their old
wives' tales about a new birth after death, ashes and cinders,
and by some strange confidence believe each other's lies.
Poor creatures ! consider what hangs over you after death,
while you are still alive. Lo, the greater part of you, the
better, as you say, are in want, cold, toil, hunger, and
your God suffers it ; but -I omit common trials. Lo, threats
are offered to you, punishments, torments ; crosses to be
undergone now, not worshipped (adorandce) ; fires too
which ye predict and fear ; where is that God who can
recover, but cannot preserve your life ? The answer of
Socrates, when he was asked about heavenly matters, is
well known, ' What is above us does not concern us.' My
opinion also is, that points which are doubtful, as are the
240 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
points in question, must be left ; nor, when so many and
such great men are in controversy on the subject, must
judgment be rashly and audaciously given on either side,
lest the consequence be either anile superstition or the
overthrow of all religion."
26.
Such was Christianity in the eyes of those who witnessed
its rise and propagation ; — one of a number of wild and
barbarous rites which were pouring in upon the Empire
from the ancient realms of superstition, and the mother of a
progeny of sects which were faithful to the original they
had derived from Egypt or Syria ; a religion unworthy
of an educated person, as appealing, not to the intellect, but
to the fears and weaknesses of human nature, and consisting,
not in the rational and cheerful enjoyment, but in a morose
rejection of the gifts of Providence ; a horrible religion, as
inflicting or enjoining cruel sufferings, and monstrous and
loathsome in its very indulgence of the passions ; a
religion leading by reaction to infidelity; a religion of
magic, and of the vulgar arts, real and pretended, with
which magic was accompanied ; a secret religion which
dared not face the day ; an itinerant, busy, proselytizing
religion, forming an extended confederacy against the
state, resisting its authority and breaking its laws. There
may be some exceptions to this general impression, such as
Pliny's discovery of the innocent and virtuous rule of life
adopted by the Christians of Pontus ; but this only proves
that Christianity was not in fact the infamous religion which
the heathen thought it ; it did not reverse their general
belief to that effect.
27.
Now it must be granted that, in some respects, this view
of Christianity depended on the times, and would alter with
their alteration. When there was no persecution, Mar-
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 2-il
tyrs could not be obstinate ; and when the Church was
raised aloft in high places, it was no longer in caves.
Still, I believe, it continued substantially the same in the
judgment of the world external to it, while there was an
external world to judge of it. " They thought it enough,"
says Julian in the fourth century, of our Lord and His
Apostles, " to deceive women, servants, and slaves, and by
their means wives and husbands." " A human fabrication,"
says he elsewhere, " put together by wickedness, having
nothing divine in it, but making a perverted use of the
fable-loving, childish, irrational part of the soul, and
offering a set of wonders to create belief." " Miserable
men," he says elsewhere, " you refuse to worship the
ancile, yet you worship the wood of the cross, and sign it
on your foreheads, and fix it on your doors. Shall one for
this hate the intelligent among you, or pity the less
understanding, who in following you have gone to such an
excess of perdition as to leave the everlasting gods and go
over to a dead Jew ? " He speaks of their adding other
dead men to Him who died so long ago. " You have
filled all places with sepulchres and monuments, though
it is nowhere told you in your religion to haunt the tombs
and to attend upon them." Elsewhere he speaks of their
" leaving the gods for corpses and relics." On the other
hand, he attributes the growth of Christianity to its
humanity towards strangers, care in burying the dead,
and pretended religiousness of life. In another place he
speaks of their care of the poor.5
Libanius, Julian's preceptor in rhetoric, delivers the
same testimony, as far as it goes. He addressed his Oration
for the Temples to a Christian Emperor, and would in
consequence be guarded in his language ; however it runs
in one direction. He speaks of "those black-habited
5 Julian ap. Cyril, pp. 39, 194, 206, 335. Epp. pp. 305, 429, 438, eel.
Spunh.
R
242 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
men/' meaning the monks, " who eat more than elephants,
and by the number of their potations trouble those who
send them drink in their chantings, and conceal this by
paleness artificially acquired." They " are in good con-
dition out of the misfortunes of others, while they pretend
to serve God by hunger/' Those whom they attack te are
like bees, they like drones/' I do not quote this passage
to prove that there were monks in Libanius's days, which
no one doubts, but to show his impression of Christianity,
as far as his works betray it.
Numantian, in the same century, describes in verse his
voyage from Rome to Gaul : one book of the poem is
extant ; he falls in with Christianity on two of the islands
which lie in his course. He thus describes them on one
of them : " The island is in a squalid state, being full of
light-haters. They call themselves monks, because they
wish to live alone without witness. They dread the gifts,
from fearing the reverses, of fortune. Thus Homer says
that malencholy was the cause of Bellerophon's anxiety ;
for it is said that after the wounds of grief mankind dis-
pleased the offended youth." He meets on the other
island a Christian, whom he had known, of good family
and fortune, and happy in his marriage, who " impelled
by the Furies had left men and gods, and, credulous
exile, was living in base concealment. Is not this herd,"
he continues, " worse than Circean poison ? then bodies
were changed, now minds."
28.
In the Philopatris, which is the work of an Author of
the fourth century,6 Crittas is introduced pale and wild.
His friend asks him if he has seen Cerberus or Hecate ;
and he answers that he has heard a rigmarole from cer-
tain " thrice-cursed sophists ; " which he thinks would
s Niebuhr ascribes it to the beginning of the tenth.
SECT. 1.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 243
drive him mad, if he heard it again, and was nearly
sending him headlong over some cliff as it was. He
retires for relief with his inquirer to a pleasant place,
shadowed by planes, where swallows and nightingales are
singing, and a quiet brook is purling. Triephon, his
friend, expresses a fear lest he has heard some incanta-
tion, and is led by the course of the dialogue, before his
friend tells his tale, to give some account of Christianity,
being himself a Christian. After speaking of the crea-
tion, as described by Moses, he falls at once upon that
doctrine of a particular providence which is so dis-
tasteful to Plutarch, Yelleius in Cicero, and Csecilius, and
generally to unbelievers. " He is in heaven," he says,
" looking at just and unjust, and causing actions to be
entered in books ; and He will recompense all on a day
which He has appointed." Critias objects that he cannot
make this consistent with the received doctrine about the
Fates, "even though he has perhaps been carried aloft
with his master, and initiated in unspeakable mysteries.'"
He also asks if the deeds of the Scythians are written in
heaven ; for if so, there must be many scribes there.
After some more words, in course of which, as in the
earlier part of the dialogue, the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity is introduced, Critias gives an account of what
befell him. He says, he fell in with a crowd in the streets;
and, while asking a friend the cause of it, others joined
them (Christians or monks), and a conversation ensues,
part of it corrupt or obscure, on the subject, as Gesner
supposes, of Julian's oppression of the Christians, especially
of the clergy. One of these interlocutors is a wretched
old man, whose " phlegm is paler than death •" another
has " a rotten cloke on, and no covering on head or feet,"
who says he has been told by some ill-clad person from
the mountains, with a shorn crown, that in the theatre
was a name hieroglyphically written of one who would
R 2
244 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
flood the highway with gold. On his laughing at the
story, his friend Crato, whom he had joined, bids him be
silent, using a Pythagorean word ; for he has " most
excellent matters to initiate him into, and that the predic-
tion is no dream but true," and will be fulfilled in August,
using the Egyptian name of the month. He attempts to
leave them in disgust, but Crato pulls him back " at the
instigation of that old demon." He is in consequence
persuaded to go " to those conjurers," who, says Crato,
would " initiate in all mysteries." He finds, in a building
which is described in the language used by Homer of the
Palace of Menelaus, " not Helen, no, but men pale and
downcast/' who ask, whether there was any bad news ;
"for they seemed," he says, "wishing the worst; and
rejoicing in misfortune, as the Furies in the theatres."
On their asking him how the city and the world went on,
and his answering that things went on smoothly and
seemed likely to do so still, they frown, and say that " the
city is in travail with a bad birth." " You, who dwell
aloft," he answers, "and see everything from on high,
doubtless have a keen perception in this matter ; but tell
me, how is the sky ? will the Sun be eclipsed ? will Mars
be in quadrature with Jupiter ? &c. -" and he goes on to
jest upon their celibacy. On their persisting in prophesy-
ing evil to the state, he says, " This evil will fall on your
own head, since you are so hard upon your country ; for
not as high -flyers have ye heard this, nor are ye adepts
in the restless astrological art, but if divinations and con-
jurings have seduced you, double is your stupidity ; for
they are the discoveries of old women and things to laugh
at." The interview then draws to an end ; but more
than enough has been quoted already to show the
author's notion of Christianity.
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 245
29.
Such, was the language of paganism after Christianity
had for fifty years been exposed to the public gaze ; after
it had been before the world for fifty more, St. Augustine
had still to defend it against the charge of being the
cause of the calamities of the Empire. And for the charge
of magic, when the Arian bishops were in formal dis-
putations with the Catholic, before Grungebald, Burgundian
King of France, at the end of the fifth century, we find still
that they charged the Catholics with being prcestigiatores"
and worshipping a number of gods ; and when the Catholics
proposed that the king should repair to the shrine of St.
Justus, where both parties might ask him concerning
their respective faiths, the Arians cried out that " they
would not seek enchantments like Saul, for Scripture was
enough for them, which was more powerful than all be-
witchments." 7 This was said, not against strangers of
whom they knew nothing, as Ethelbert might be sus-
picious of St. Augustine and his brother missionaries, but
against a body of men who lived among them.
I do not think it can be doubted then that, had Tacitus,
Suetonius, and Pliny, Celsus, Porphyry, and the other
opponents of Christianity, lived in the fourth century, their
evidence concerning Christianity would be very much the
same as it has come down to us from the centuries before it.
In either case, a man of the world and a philosopher would
have been disgusted at the gloom and sadness of its profession,
its mysteriousness, its claim of miracles, the want of good
sense imputable to its rule of life, and the unsettlement and
discord it was introducing into the social and political world.
30.
On the whole then I conclude as follows : — if there is a
7 Sirm. Opp. ii. p. 225, ed. Ven.
246 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
form of Christianity now in the world which is accused of
gross superstition, of borrowing its rites and customs from
the heathen, and of ascribing to forms and ceremonies an
occult virtue ; — a religion which is considered to burden
and enslave the mind by its requisitions, to address itself
to the weak-minded and ignorant, to be supported by
sophistry and imposture, and to contradict reason and
exalt mere irrational faith; — a religion which impresses
on the serious mind very distressing views of the guilt
and consequences of sin, sets upon the minute acts of the
day, one by one, their definite value for praise or blame,
and thus casts a grave shadow over the future ; — a re-
ligion which holds up to admiration the surrender of
wealth, and disables serious persons from enjoying it if
they would ; — a religion, the doctrines of which, be they
good or bad, are to the generality of men unknown ;
which is considered to bear on its very surface signs of
folly and falsehood so distinct that a glance suffices to
judge of it, and that careful examination is preposterous ;
which is felt to be so simply bad, that it may be
calumniated at hazard and at pleasure, it being nothing
but absurdity to stand upon the accurate distribution
of its guilt among its particular acts, or painfully to de-
termine how far this or that story concerning it
is literally true, or what has to be allowed in candour, or
what is improbable, or what cuts two ways, or what is not
proved, or what may be plausibly defended ; — a religion
such, that men look at a convert to it with a feeling
which no other denomination raises except Judaism,
Socialism, or Mormonism, viz. with curiosity, suspicion,
fear, disgust, as the case may be, as if something strange
had befallen him, as if he had had an initiation into a
mystery, and had come into communion with dreadful
influences, as if he were now one of a confederacy which
claimed him, absorbed him, stripped him of his personality,
SECT. I.] THE FIRST CENTURIES. 247
reduced him to a mere organ or instrument of a whole ;
— a religion which men hate as proselytizing, anti-social,
revolutionary, as dividing families, separating chief friends,
corrupting the maxims of government, making a mock
at law, dissolving the empire, the enemy of human nature,
and a " conspirator against its rights and privileges •" 8 —
a religion which they consider the champion and instru-
ment of darkness, and a pollution calling down upon the
land the anger of heaven ; — a religion which they asso-
ciate with intrigue and conspiracy, which they speak
about in whispers, which they detect by anticipation in
whatever goes wrong, and to which they impute what-
ever is unaccountable ; — a religion, the very name of
which they cast out as evil, and use simply as a bad
epithet, and which from the impulse of self-preservation
they would persecute if they could ; — if there be such a
religion now in the world, it is not unlike Christianity as
that same world viewed it, when first it came forth from
its Divine Author.9
8 Proph. Office, p. 132 [Via Media, vol. i. p. 109.]
9 [Since the publication of this Volume in 1845, a writer in a Conserva-
tive periodical of great name has considered that no happier designation
could be bestowed upon us than that which heathen statesmen gave to the
first Christians, " enemies of the human race." What a remarkable witness
to our identity with the Church of St. Paul (" a pestilent fellow, and a mover
of sedition throughout the world "), of St. Ignatius, St. Polycarp, and the
other Martyrs ! In this matter, Conservatives, if politicians, join with
Parliamentary Liberals, and with the movement parties in Great Britain
France, Germany, and Italy, irf their view of our religion.
"The Catholics," says the Quarterly Review for January, 1873, pp.
181-2, " wherever they are numerous and powerful in a Protestant nation,
compel (sic) as it were by a law of their being, that nation to treat them
with stern repression and control. . . . Catholicism, if it be true to itself,
and its mission, cannot (sic) . . . wherever and whenever the opportunity is
afforded it, abstain from claiming, working for, and grasping that supremacy
and paramount influence and control, which it conscientiously believes to be
its inalienable and universal due . . . . By the force of circumstances, by
the inexorable logic of its claims, it must be the intestine foe or the dis-
248 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
SECTION II.
THE CHURCH OF THE FOURTH CENTURY.
Till the Imperial Government had become Christian, and
heresies were put down by the arm of power, the face of
Christendom presented much the same appearance all along
as on the first propagation of the religion. What Gnos-
ticism, Montanism, Judaism and, I may add, the Oriental
mysteries were to the nascent Church, as described in the
foregoing Section, such were the Manichean, Donatist,
Apollinarian and contemporary sects afterwards. The
Church in each place looked at first sight as but one out
of a number of religious communions, with little of a
very distinctive character except to the careful inquirer.
Still there were external indications of essential differences
within ; and, as we have already compared it in the first
centuries, we may now contrast it in the fourth, with the
rival religious bodies with which it was encompassed.
2.
How was the man to guide his course who wished to
join himself to the doctrine and fellowship of the Apostles
in the times of St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and St. Augustine?
Few indeed were the districts in the orbis terrarum, which
did not then, as in the Ante-nicene era, present a number
of creeds and communions for his choice. Gaul indeed is
said at that era to have been perfectly free from heresies ;
at least none are mentioned as belonging to that country
in the Theodosian Code. But in Egypt, in the early part
of the fourth century, the Meletian schism numbered one-
turbing element of every state in which it does not bear sway ; and ... it
must now stand out in the estimate of all Protestants, Patriots, and
Thinkers" (philosophers and historians, as Tacitus?) "as the hostis Jiumani
generis (sic), &c."]
SECT.. II.] THE FOURTH CENTURY. 249
third as many bishops as were contained in the whole Patri-
archate. In Africa, towards the end of it, while the Catholic
Bishops amounted in all to 466, the Donatists rivalled
them with as many as 400. In Spain Priscillianism was
spread from the Pyrenees to the Ocean. It seems to have
been the religion of the population in the province of
Gallicia, while its author Priscillian, whose death had
been contrived by the Ithacians, was honoured as a Martyr.
The Manichees, hiding themselves under a variety of
names in different localities, were not in the least flourish-
ing condition at Rome. Rome and Italy were the seat of
the Marcionites. The Origenists, too, are mentioned by
St. Jerome as " bringing a cargo of blasphemies into the
port of Rome." And Rome was the seat of a Novatian, a
Donatist, and a Luciferian bishop, in addition to the legi-
timate occupant of the See of St. Peter. The Luciferians,
as was natural under the circumstances of their schism,
were sprinkled over Christendom from Spain to Palestine,
and from Treves to Lybia ; while in its parent country
Sardinia, as a centre of that extended range, Lucifer seems
to have received the honours of a Saint.
When St. Gregory Nazianzen began to preach at
Constantinople, the Arians were in possession of its hundred
churches; they had the populace in their favour, and,
after their legal dislodgment, edict after edict was
ineffectually issued against them. The Novatians too
abounded there ; and the Sabbatians, who had separated
from, them, had a church, where they prayed at the tomb
of their founder. Moreover, Apollinarians, Eunomians,
and Semi-arians, mustered in great numbers at Constanti-
nople. The Semi-arian bishops were as popular in the
neighbouring provinces, as the Arian doctrine in the
capital. They had possession of the coast of the Hellespont
and Bithynia ; and were found in Phrygia, Isauria, and
the neighbouring parts of Asia Minor. Phrygia was the
250 THE CHURCH OF [cH. VI.
head-quarters of the Montanists, and was overrun by the
Messalians, who had advanced thus far from Mesopotamia,
spreading through Syria, Lycaonia, Pamphylia, and
Cappadocia in their way. In the lesser Armenia, the
same heretics had penetrated into the monasteries.
Phrygia, too, and Paphlagonia were the seat of the
Novatians, who besides were in force at Nicaea and
Nicomedia, were found in Alexandria, Africa, and Spain,
and had a bishop even in Scythia. The whole tract of
country from the Hellespont to Cilicia had nearly lapsed
into Eunomianism, and the tract from Cilicia as far as
Phoenicia into Apollinarianism. The disorders of the
Church of Antioch are well known : an Arian succession,
two orthodox claimants, and a bishop of the Apollinarians.
Palestine abounded in Origenists, if at that time they may
properly be called a sect ; Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia
were overrun with Marcionites ; Osrhoene was occupied
by the followers of Bardesanes and Harmonius, whose
hymns so nearly took the place of national tunes that
St. Ephrem found no better way of resisting the heresy
than setting them to fresh words. Theodoret in Coma-
gene speaks in the next century of reclaiming eight
villages of Marcionites, one of Eunomians, and one of
Arians.
3.
These sects were of very various character. Learning,
eloquence, and talent were the characteristics of the Apolli-
narians, Manichees, and Pelagians ; Tichonius the Dona-
tist was distinguished in Biblical interpretation ; the
Serni-arian and Apollinarian leaders were men of grave
and correct behaviour ; the Novatians had sided with the
Orthodox during the Arian persecution ; the Montanists
and Messalians addressed themselves to an almost heathen
population ; the atrocious fanaticism of the Priscillianists,
SECT. II.] THE FOURTH CENTURY. 251
the fury of the Arian women of Alexandria and Constan-
tinople, and the savage cruelty of the Circumcellions can
hardly be exaggerated. These various sectaries had their
orders of clergy, bishops, priests and deacons ; their
readers and ministers ; their celebrants and altars ; their
hymns and litanies. They preached to the crowds in
public, and their meeting-houses bore the semblance of
churches. They had their sacristies and cemeteries ; their
farms ; their professors and doctors ; their schools.
Miracles were ascribed to the Arian Theophilus, to the
Luciferian Gregory of Elvira, to a Macedonian in Cyzicus,
and to the Donatists in Africa.
4.
How was an individual inquirer to find, or a private
Christian to keep the Truth, amid so many rival teachers?
The misfortunes or perils of holy men and saints show us
the difficulty ; St. Augustine was nine years a Manichee ;
St. Basil for a time was in admiration of the Semi-arians ;
St. Sulpicius gave a momentary countenance to the
Pelagians ; St. Paula listened, and Melania assented, to
the Origenists. Yet the rule was simple, which would
direct every one right ; and in that age, at least, no one
could be wrong for any long time without his own fault.
The Church is everywhere, but it is one ; sects are every-
where, but they are many, independent and discordant.
Catholicity is the attribute of the Church, independency of
sectaries. It is true that some sects might seem almost
Catholic in their diffusion ; Novatians or Marcionites were
in all quarters of the empire ; yet it is hardly more than
the name, or the general doctrine or philosophy, that was
universal : the different portions which professed it seem
to have been bound together by no strict or definite tie.
The Church might be evanescent or lost for a while in
particular countries, or it might be levelled and buried
252 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
among sects, when the eye was confined to one spot, or it
might be confronted by the one and same heresy in various
places ; but, on looking round the orb is terrarum, there
was no mistaking that body which, and which alone, had
possession of it. The Church is a kingdom ; a heresy is a
family rather than a kingdom ; and as a family continually
divides and sends out branches, founding new houses, and
propagating itself in colonies, each of them as independent
as its original head, so was it with heresy. Simon Magus,
the first heretic, had been Patriarch of Menandrians,
Basilidians, Valentinians, and the whole family of
Gnostics; Tatian of Encratites, Severians, Aquarians,
Apotactites, and Saccophori. The Montanists had been
propagated into Tascodrugites, Pepuzians, Artotyrites, and
Quartodecimans. Eutyches, in a later time, gave birth to
the Dioscorians, Gaianites, Theodosians, Agnoetaa, Theo-
paschites, Acephali, Semidalitae, Nagranitae, Jacobites, and
others. This is the uniform history of heresy. The
patronage of the civil power might for a time counteract
the law of its nature, but it showed it as soon as that
obstacle was removed. Scarcely was Arianism deprived
of the churches of Constantinople, and left to itself, than
it split in that very city into the Dorotheans, the
Psathyrians, and the Curtians ; and the Eunomians into
the Theophronians and Eutychians. One fourth part of
the Donatists speedily became Maximinianists ; and
besides these were the Rogatians, the Primianists, the
Urbanists, and the Claudianists. If such was the fecundity
of the heretical principle in one place, it is not to be
supposed that Novatians or Marcionites in Africa or the
East would feel themselves bound to think or to act with
their fellow-sectaries of Rome or Constantinople ; and the
great varieties or inconsistencies of statement, which have
come down to us concerning the tenets of heresies, may
thus be explained. This had been the case with the pagan
SECT. II.] THE FOTJKTH CENTURY. 253
rites, whether indigenous or itinerant, to which heresy
succeeded. The established priesthoods were local pro-
perties, as independent theologically as they were geogra-
phically of each other ; the fanatical companies which
spread over the Empire dissolved and formed again as the
circumstances of the moment occasioned. So was it with
heresy : it was, by its very nature, its own master, free to
change, self- sufficient ; and, having thrown off the yoke
of the Church, it was little likely to submit to any usurped
and spurious authority. Montaiiism and Manicheeism
might perhaps in some sort furnish an exception to this
remark.
5.
In one point alone the heresies seem universally to
have agreed, — in hatred to the Church. This might at
that time be considered one of her surest and most obvious
Notes. She was that body of which all sects, however
divided among themselves, spoke ill ; according to the
prophecy, " If they have called the Master of the house
Beelzebub, how much more them of His household." They
disliked and they feared her ; they did their utmost to
overcome their mutual differences, in order to unite
against her. Their utmost indeed was little, for inde-
pendency was the law of their being ; they could not
exert themselves without fresh quarrels, both in the bosom
of each, and one with another. " BeUum hcereticorum pax
est ecctesice" had become a proverb ; but they felt the
great desirableness of union against the only body which
was the natural antagonist of all, and various are the in-
stances which occur in ecclesiastical history of attempted
coalitions. The Meletians of Africa united with the
Arians against St. Athanasius ; the Semi-arians of the
Council of Sardica corresponded with the Donatists of
Africa ; Nestorius received ai^d protected the Pelagians ;
254 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
Aspar, the Arian minister of Leo the Emperor, favoured
the Monophysites of Egypt ; the Jacobites of Egypt sided
with the Moslem, who are charged with holding a Nestorian
doctrine. It had been so from the beginning : " They
huddle up a peace with all everywhere/' says Tertullian,
"for it maketh no matter to them, although they hold
different doctrines, so long as they conspire together in
their siege against the one thing, Truth." * And even
though active co-operation was impracticable, at least
hard words cost nothing, and could express that common
hatred at all seasons. Accordingly, by Montanists,
Catholics were called " the carnal ;" by Novatians, " the
apostates;" by Yalentinians, "the worldly;" by Manichees,
"the simple;" by Aerians, "the ancient;" by
Apollinarians, " the man-worshippers ;" by Origenists,
" the flesh-lovers," and " the slimy ;" by the Nestorians,
" Egyptians ;" by Monophysites, " the Chalcedonians :"
by Donatists, "the traitors," and "the sinners," and
" servants of Antichrist ;" and St. Peter's chair, " the
seat of pestilence ;" and by the Luciferians, the Church
was called " a brothel," " the devil's harlot/' and
" synagogue of Satan :" so that it might be called a Note of
the Church, as I have said, for the use of the most busy and
the most ignorant, that she was on one side and all other
bodies on the other.
Yet, strange as it may appear, there was one title of the
Church of a very different nature from those which have
been enumerated, — a title of honour, which all men agreed
to give her, — which furnished a still more simple direction
than such epithets of abuse to aid the busy and the
ignorant in finding her, and which was used by the
Fathers for that purpose. It was one which the sects
1 De Prsescr. Hser. 41, Oxf . tr.
SECT, II.] THE FOTJRTH CENTURY. 255
could neither claim for themselves, nor hinder being
enjoyed by its rightful owner, though, since it was the
characteristic designation of the Church in the Creed, it
seemed to surrender the whole controversy between the
two parties engaged in it. Balaam could not keep from
blessing the ancient people of God ; and the whole world,
heresies inclusive, were irresistibly constrained to call
God's second election by its prophetical title of the
" Catholic " Church. St. Paul tells us that the heretic is
" condemned by himself ;" and no clearer witness against
the sects of the earlier centuries was needed by the Church,
than their own testimony to this contrast between her
actual position and their own. Sects, say the Fathers, are
called after the name of their founders, or from their locality,
or from their doctrine. So was it from the beginning : " I
am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas ;" but it
was promised to the Church that she should have no mas-
ter upon earth, and that she should " gather together in
one the children of God that were scattered abroad."
Her every-day name, which was understood in the market-
place and used in the palace, which every chance comer
knew, and which state-edicts recognized, was the " Catho-
lic " Church. This was that very description of Chris-
tianity in those times which we are all along engaged in
determining. And it had been recognized as such from
the first ; the name or the fact is put forth by St. Ignatius,
St. Justin, St. Clement ; by the Church of Smyrna, St.
Irenoeus, Rhodon or another, Tertullian, Origen, St.
Cyprian, St. Cornelius ; by the Martyrs, Pionius, Sabina,
and Asclepiades ; by Lactantius, Eusebius, Adimantius, St.
Athanasius, St. Pacian, St. Optatus, St. Epiphanius, St.
Cyril, St. Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome,
St. Augustine, and Facundus. St. Clement uses it as an
argument against the Gnostics, St. Augustine against the
256 THE CHURCH OF [_CH. VI.
Donatists and Manichees, St. Jerome against the Luci-
ferians, and St. Pacian against the Novatians.
7.
It was an argument for educated and simple. When
St. Ambrose would convert the cultivated reason of
Augustine, he bade him study the book of Isaiah, who is
the prophet, as of the Messiah, so of the calling of the
Gentiles and of the Imperial power of the Church. And
when St. Cyril would give a rule to his crowd of
Catechumens, " If ever thou art sojourning in any city,"
he says, " inquire not simply where the Lord's house is,
(for the sects of the profane also make an attempt to call
their own dens houses of the Lord,) nor merely where the
Church is, but where is the Catholic Church. For this is
the peculiar name of this Holy Body, the Mother of us all,
which is the Spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ."3 "In the
Catholic Church/' says St. Augustine to the Manichees,
" not to speak of that most pure wisdom, to the knowledge
of which few spiritual men attain in this life so as to know
it even in its least measure, — as men, indeed, yet, without
any doubt, — (for the multitude of Christians are safest, not
in understanding with quickness, but in believing with
simplicity,) not to speak of this wisdom, which ye do not
believe to be in the Catholic Church, there are many
other considerations which most sufficiently hold me in her
bosom. I am held by the consent of people and nations ;
by that authority which began in miracles, was nourished
in hope, was increased by charity, and made steadfast by
age ; by that succession of priests from the chair of the
Apostle Peter, to whose feeding the Lord after His
resurrection commended His sheep, even to the present
episcopate ; lastly, by the very title of Catholic, which,
not without cause, hath this Church alone, amid so many
3 Cat. xviii. 26.
SECT. II.] THE FOURTH CENTURY. 257
heresies, obtained in such sort, that, whereas all heretics
wish to be called Catholics, nevertheless to any stranger,
who asked where to find the ' Catholic ' Church, none of
them would dare to point to his own basilica or home. These
dearest bonds, then, of the Christian Name, so many and
such, rightly hold a man in belief in the Catholic Church,
even though, by reason of the slowness of our understand-
ing or our deserts, truth doth not yet show herself in her
clearest tokens. But among you, who have none of these
reasons to invite and detain me, I hear but the loud sound
of a promise of the truth ; which truth, verily, if it be
so manifestly displayed among you that there can be no
mistake about it, is to be preferred to all those things by
which I am held in the Catholic Church ; but if it
is promised alone, and not exhibited, no one shall move
me from that faith which by so many and great ties binds
my mind to the Christian religion/54 When Adimantius
asked his Marcionite opponent, how he was a Christian
who did not even bear that name, but was called from
Marcion, he retorts, " And you are called from the
Catholic Church, therefore ye are not Christians either ;"
Adimantius answers, " Did we profess man's name, you
would have spoken to the point ; but if we are called from
being all over the world, what is there -bad in this ?"5
8.
" Whereas there is one God and one Lord," says St.
Clement, " therefore also that which is the highest in esteem
is praised on the score of being sole, as after the pattern
of the One Principle. In the nature then of the One, the
Church, which is one, hath its portion, which they would
forcibly cut up into many heresies. In substance then, and
in idea, and in first principle, and in pre-eminence, we call
the ancient Catholic Church sole ; in order to the unity of
4 Contr. Ep. Manich. 5. 5 Origen, Opp. t. i. p. 809.
S
258 THE CHURCH OF [cH. VI.
one faith, the faith according to her own covenants, or
rather that one covenant in different times, which, by the
will of one God and through one Lord, is gathering
together those who are already ordained, whom God hath
predestined, having known that they would be just from the
foundation bf the world But of heresies, some are
called from a man's name, as Valentine's heresy, Marcion's,
and Basilides' (though they profess to bring the opinion of
Matthias, for all the Apostles had, as one teaching, so one
tradition) ; and others from place, as the Peratici ; and
others from nation, as that of the Phrygians ; and others
from their actions, as that of the Encratites ; and others
from their peculiar doctrines, as the Docetae and Hematites;
and others from their hypotheses, and what they have
honoured, as Cainites and the Ophites ; and others from
their wicked conduct and enormities, as those Simonians
who are called Eutychites."6 " There are, and there have
been," says St. Justin, if many who have taught atheistic
and blasphemous words and deeds, coming in the name of
Jesus ; and they are called by us from the appellation of
the men whence each doctrine and opinion began . . . Some
are called Marcians, others Yalentinians, others Basilidians,
others Saturnilians."7 " When men are called Phrygians,
or Novatians, or Yalentinians, or Marcionitcs, or Anthrq-
pians," says Lactantius, " or by any other name, they
cease to be Christians ; for they have lost Christ's Name,
and clothe themselves in human and foreign titles. It is
the Catholic Church alone which retains the true worship."8
"We never heard of Petrines, or Paulines, or Bar-
tholomeans, or Thaddeans," says St. Epiphanius ; " but
from the first there was one preaching of all the Apostles,
not preaching themselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.
Wherefore also all gave one name to the Church, not
their own, but that of their Lord Jesus Christ, since they
6 Strom, vii. 17. 7 c. Tryph. 35. 8 Instit. 4. 30.
SECT. II.] THE FOURTH CENTURY. 259
began to be called Christians first at Antioch ; which is
the Sole Catholic Church, having nought else but Christ's,
being a Church of Christians ; not of Christs, but of
Christians, He being One, they from that One being called
Christians. None, but this Church and her preachers, are of
this character, as is shown by their own epithets, Manicheans,
and Simonians, and Yalentinians, and Ebionites." ' " If
you ever hear those who are said to belong to Christ,"
says St. Jerome, " named, not from the Lord Jesus
Christ, but from some other, say Marcionites, Valentinians,
Mountaineers, Campestrians, know that it is not Christ's
Church, but the synagogue of Antichrist." !
9.
St. Pacian's letters to the Novatian Bishop Sympronian
require a more extended notice. The latter had required
the Catholic faith to be proved to him without distinctly
stating from what portion of it he dissented; and he
boasted that he had never found any one to convince
him of its truth. St. Pacian observes that there is one
point which Sympronian cannot dispute, and which settles
the question, the very name Catholic. He then supposes
Sympronian to object thalt, " under the Apostles no one
was called Catholic." He answers, " Be it thus ; 2 it shall
have been so ; allow even that. When, after the Apostles,
heresies had burst forth, and were striving under various
names to tear piecemeal and divide ' the Dove ' and ' the
Queen ' of God, did not the Apostolic people require a name
of their own, whereby to mark the unity of the people that
was uncorrupted, lest the error of some should rend limb
by limb ' the undefiled virgin ' of God ? Was it not seemly
that the chief head should be distinguished by its own
peculiar appellation ? Suppose this very day I entered a
9 Hser. 42, p. 366. 1 In Lucif. fin.
2 The Oxford translation is used.
S 2
260 THE CHURCH OF [CH. \'I.
populous city. When I had found Marcionites, Apolli-
narians, Cataphrygians, Novatians, and others of the
kind, who call themselves Christians, by what name
should I recognize the congregation of my own people,
unless it were named Catholic ? . . . . Whence was it
delivered to me ? Certainly that which has stood through
so many ages was not borrowed from man. This name
' Catholic ' sounds not of Marcion, nor of Apelles, nor of
Montanus, nor does it take heretics for its authors/*
In his second letter, he continues, " Certainly that was
no accessory name which endured through so many ages.
And, indeed, I am glad for thee, that, although thou
mayest have preferred others, yet thou agreest that the
name attaches to us, which should you deny nature
would cry out. But, and if you still have doubts, let us
hold our peace. We will both be that which we shall be
named." After alluding to Sympronian's remark that,
though Cyprian was holy, ft his people bear the name of
Apostaticum, Capitolinum, or Synedrium," which were
some of the Novatian titles of the Church, St. Pacian
replies, " Ask a century, brother, and all its years in suc-
cession, whether this name has adhered to us ; whether
the people of Cyprian have been called other than Catholic ?
No one of these names have I ever heard." It followed
that such appellations were " taunts, not names/' and there-
fore unmannerly. On the other hand it seems that Sym-
pronian did not like to be called a Novatian, though he
could not call himself a Catholic. " Tell me yourselves,"
says St. Pacian, " what ye are called. Do ye deny that
the Novatians are called from Novatian ? Impose on them
whatever name you like ; that will ever adhere to them.
Search, if you please, whole annals, and trust so many
ages. You will answer, ' Christian/ But if I inquire the
genus of the sect, you will not deny that it is Novatian.
. . . Confess it without deceit ; there is no wickedness in
SECT. II.] THE FOURTH CENTURY. 261
the name. Why, when so often inquired for, do you hide
yourself? Why ashamed of the origin of your name ?
When you first wrote, I thought you a Cataphrygian. . . .
Dost thou grudge me my name, and yet shun thine own ?
Think what there is of shame in a cause which shrinks
from its own name."
In a third letter : " ' The Church is the Body of Christ.'
Truly, the body, not a member ; the body composed of
many parts and members knit in one, as saith the Apos-
tle, 'For the Body is not one member, but many/
Therefore, the Church is the full body, compacted and
diffused now throughout the whole world ; like a city, I
mean, all whose parts are united, not as ye are, 0 Nova-
tians, some small and insolent portion, and a mere swelling
that has gathered and separated from the rest of the body.
. . . Great is the progeny of the Virgin, and without
number her offspring, wherewith the whole world is filled,
wherewith the populous swarms ever throng the circum-
fluous hive." And he founds this characteristic of the
Church upon the prophecies : " At length, brother Sym-
pronian, be not ashamed to be with the many ; at length
consent to despise these festering spots of the Novatians,
and these parings of yours ; and at length to look upon the
flocks of the Catholics, and the people of the Church
extending so far and wide. . . . Hear what David saith,
' I will sing unto Thy name in the great congregation ;'
and, again, * I will praise Thee among much people ;' and
' the Lord, even the most mighty God, hath spoken, and
called the world from the rising up of the sun unto the
going down thereof/ What ! shall the seed of Abraham,
which is as the stars and the sand on the seashore for num-
ber, be contented with your poverty ? . . . Recognize now,
brother, the Church of God extending her tabernacles and
fixing the stakes of her curtains on the right and on the
left ; understand that ' the Lord's name is praised
262 THE CHURCH OF [cH. VI.
from the rising up of the sun unto the going down
thereof.' "
10.
In citing these passages, I am not proving what was
the doctrine of the Fathers concerning the Church in those
early times, or what were the promises made to it in
Scripture; but simply ascertaining what, in matter of
fact, was its then condition relatively to the various Chris-
tian bodies among which it was found. That the Fathers
were able to put forward a certain doctrine, that they
were able to appeal to the prophecies, proves that matter
of fact ; for unless the Church, and the Church alone, had
been one body everywhere, they could not have argued on
the supposition that it was so. And so as to the word
" Catholic ;" it is enough that the Church was so called ;
that title was a confirmatory proof and symbol of what is
even otherwise so plain, that she, as St. Pacian explains the
word, was everywhere one, while the sects of the day were
nowhere one, but everywhere divided. Sects might,
indeed, be everywhere, but they were in no two places the
same ; every spot had its own independent communion, or
at least to this result they were inevitably and continually
tending.
11.
St. Pacian writes in Spain : the same contrast between
the Church and sectarianism is presented to us in Africa
in the instance of the Donatists ; and St. Optatus is a
witness both to the fact, and to its notoriety, and to the
deep impressions which it made on all parties. Whether
or not the Donatists identified themselves with the true
Church, and cut off the rest of Christendom from it, is not
the question here, nor alters the fact which I wish dis-
tinctly brought out and recognized, that in those ancient
SECT. II.] THE FOURTH CENTURY. 263
times the Church was that Body which was spread over
the orbis termrum, and sects were those bodies which were
local or transitory.
" What is that one Church," says St. Optatus, " which
Christ calls ' Dove ' and ' Spouse '? . . . It cannot be in
the multitude of heretics and schismatics. If so, it follows
that it is but in one place. Thou, brother Parmenian, hast
said that it is with you alone ; unless, perhaps, you aim at
claiming for yourselves a special sanctity from your pride,
so that where you will, there the Church may be, and may
not be_, where you will not. Must it then be in a small
portion of Africa, in the corner of a small realm, among
you, but not among us in another part of Africa ? And
not in Spain, in Gaul, in Italy, where you are not ? And
if you will have it only among you, not in the three
Pannonian provinces, in Dacia, Moesia, Thrace, Achaia,
Macedonia, and in all Greece, where you are not ? And
that you may keep it among yourselves, not in Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Pamphylia, Phrygia, Cilicia, in the
three Syrias, in the two Armenias, in all Egypt, and in
Mesopotamia, where you are not ? Not among such
innumerable islands and the other provinces, scarcely
numerable, where you are not ? What will become then
of the meaning of the word Catholic, which is given to the
Church, as being according to reason3 and diffused every
where ? For if thus at your pleasure you narrow the Church,
if you withdraw from her all the nations, where will be the
earnings of the Son of God ? where will be that which the
Father hath so amply accorded to Him, saying in the
second Psalm ' I will give thee the heathen for Thine inheri-
tance and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy posses-
sion,' &c. ? . . The whole earth is given Him with thena-
tions ; its whole circuit (orbis) is Christ's one possession."4
3 Rationalilis ; apparently an allusion to the civil officer called Catho-
licus or Rationalis, receiver- general. 4 Ad Farm. ii. init.
264 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
12.
An African writer contemporary with St. Augustine, if
not St. Augustine himself, enumerates the small portions
of the Donatist Sect, in and out of Africa, and asks if
they can be imagined to be the fulfilment of the Scripture
promise to the Church. " If the holy Scriptures have
assigned the Church to Africa alone, or to the scanty
Cutzupitans or Mountaineers of Rome, or to the house or
patrimony of one Spanish woman, however the argument
may stand from other writings, then none but the Donatists
have possession of the Church. If holy Scripture
determines it to the few Moors of the Caesarean province,
we must go over to the Rogatists : if to the few Tripoli-
tans or Byzacenes and Provincials, the Maximianists have
attained to it ; if in the Orientals only, it is to be sought
for among Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, and others
that may be there ; for who can enumerate every heresy
of every nation ? But if Christ's Church, by the divine
and most certain testimonies of Canonical Scriptures, is
assigned to all nations, whatever may be adduced, and
from whatever quarter cited, by those who say, ' Lo, here
is Christ and lo there,' let us rather hear, if we be His
sheep, the voice of our Shepherd saying unto us, l Do not
believe/ For they are not each found in the many nations
where she is ; but she, who is everywhere, is found where
they are." 5
Lastly, let us hear St. Augustine himself again in the
same controversy : " They do not communicate with us,
as you say," he observes to Cresconius, " Novatians,
Arians, Patripassians, Yalentinians, Patricians, Apellites,
Marcionites, Ophites, and the rest of those sacrilegious
names, as you call them, of nefarious pests rather than
sects. Yet, wheresoever they are, there is the Catholic
5 De Unit. Eccles. 6.
SECT. TI.] THE FOURTH CENTURY. 265
Church ; as in Africa it is where you are. On the other
hand, neither you, nor any one of those heresies whatever,
is to be found wherever is the Catholic Church. Whence
it appears, which is that tree whose boughs extend over all
the earth by the richness of its fruitfulness, and which be
those broken branches which have not the life of the root,
but lie arid wither, each in its own place." '
13.
It may be possibly suggested that this universality which
the Fathers ascribe to the Catholic Church lay in its Apos-
tolical descent, or again in its Episcopacy ; and that it was
one, not as being one kingdom or civitas " at unity with
itself/' with one and the same intelligence in every part, one
sympathy, one ruling principle, one organization, one
communion, but because, though consisting of a number
of independent communities, at variance (if so be) with
each other even to a breach of communion, nevertheless
all these were possessed of a legitimate succession of clergy,
or all governed by Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. But
who will in seriousness maintain that relationship, or that
sameness of structure, makes two bodies one ? England
and Prussia are both of them monarchies ; are they there-
fore one kingdom ? England and the United States are
from one stock ; can they therefore be called one state ?
England and Ireland are peopled by different races ; yet are
they not one kingdom still ? If unity lies in the Apostolical
succession, an act of schism is from the nature of the case
impossible ; for as no one can reverse his parentage, so no
Church can undo the fact that its clergy have come by
lineal descent from the Apostles. Either there is no such
sin as schism, or unity does not lie in the Episcopal form
or in the Episcopal ordination. And this is felt by the
controversialists of this day ; who in consequence are
6 Contr. Cresc. iv. 75 ; also, iii. 77.
266 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
obliged to invent a sin, and to consider, not division of
Church from Church, but the interference of Church with.
Church to be the sin of schism, as if local dioceses and
bishops with restraint were more than ecclesiastical
arrangements and by-laws of the Church, however sacred,
while schism is a sin against her essence. Thus they
strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel. Division is the
schism, if schism there be, not interference. If interfer-
ence is a sin, division which is the cause of it is a greater ;
but where division is a duty, there can be no sin in inter-
ference.
14.
Far different from such a theory is the picture which
the ancient Church presents to us ; true, it was governed
by Bishops, and those Bishops came from the Apostles,
but it was a kingdom besides ; and as a kingdom admits
of the possibility of rebels, so does such a Church involve
sectaries and schismatics, but not independent portions.
It was a vast organized association, co-extensive with the
Roman Empire, or rather overflowing it. Its Bishops
were not mere local officers, but possessed a quasi-ecumeni-
cal power, extending wherever a Christian was to be
found. " No Christian," says Bingham, " would pretend
to travel without taking letters of credence with him
from his own bishop, if he meant to communicate with
the Christian Church in a foreign country. Such was the
admirable unity of the Church Catholic in those days, and
the blessed harmony and consent of her bishops among
one another." 7 St. Gregory Nazianzen calls St. Cyprian
an universal Bishop, " presiding/'' as the same author
presently quotes Gregory, "not only over the Church of
Carthage and Africa, but over all the regions of the West,
and over the East, and South, and Northern parts of the
7 Antiq. ii. 4, § 5.
SECT. II.] THE FOURTH CENTURY. 267
world also." This is evidence of a unity throughout Chris-
tendom, not of mere origin or of Apostolical succession, but of
government. Bingham continues " [Gregory] says the same
of Athanasius ; that, in being made Bishop of Alexandria, he
was made Bishop of the whole world. Chrysostom, in like
manner, styles Timothy, Bishop of the universe
The great Athanasius, as he returned from his exile, made
no scruple to ordain in several cities as he went along,
though they were not in his own diocese. And the
famous Eusebius of Samosata did the like, in the times of
the Arian persecution under Valens. . . Epiphanius made
use of the same power and privilege in a like case,
ordaining Paulinianus, St. Jerome's brother, first deacon
and then presbyter, in a monastery out of his own diocese
in Palestine."8 And so in respect of teaching, before
Councils met on any large scale, St. Ignatius of Antioch
had addressed letters to the Churches along the coast of
Asia Minor, when on his way to martyrdom at Rome. St.
Irenseus, when a subject of the Church of Smyrna,
betakes himself to Gaul, and answers in Lyons the heresies
of Syria. The see of St. Hippolytus, as if he belonged to
all parts of the orbis terrarum, cannot be located, and is
variously placed in the neighbourhood of Rome and in
Arabia. Hosius, a Spanish Bishop, arbitrates in an
Alexandrian controversy. St. Athanasius, driven from
his Church, makes all Christendom his home, from Treves
to Ethiopia, and introduces into the West the discipline
of the Egyptian Antony. St. Jerome is born in Dalmatia,
studies at Constantinople and Alexandria, is secretary to
St. Damasus at Rome, and settles and dies in Palestine.
8 Antiq. 5, § 3. [Bingham apparently in this passage is indirectly reply-
ing to the Catholic argument for the Pope's Supremacy drawn from the
titles and acts ascribed to him in antiquity; but that argument is cumula-
tive in character, being part of a whole body of proof; and there is more-
over a great difference between a rhetorical discourse and a synodal enuncia-
tion as at Chalcedon.]
268 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
Above all the See of Rome itself is the centre of teaching
as well as of action, is visited by Fathers and heretics as a
tribunal in controversy, and by ancient custom sends her
alms to the poor Christians of all Churches, to Achaia
and Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, and Cappadocia.
15.
Moreover, this universal Church was not only one ; it
was exclusive also. As to the vehemence with which Chris-
tians of the Ante-nicene period denounced the idolatries
and sins of paganism, and proclaimed the judgments which
would be their consequence, this is well known, and led to
their being reputed in the heathen world as " enemies of
mankind." " Worthily doth God exert the lash of His
stripes and scourges," says St. Cyprian to a heathen
magistrate ; *'f and since they avail so little, and convert
not men to God by all this dreadfulness of havoc, there
abides beyond the prison eternal and the ceaseless flame
and the everlasting penalty. . . . Why humble yourself and
bend to false gods ? Why bow your captive body before
helpless images and moulded earth ? Why grovel in the
prostration of death, like the serpent whom ye worship ?
Why rush into the downfall of the devil, his fall the cause
of yours, and he your companion ? . . . . Believe and live ;
you have been our persecutors in time ; in eternity, be
companions of our joy."9 " These rigid sentiments," says
Gibbon, " which had been unknown to the ancient world,
appear to have infused a spirit of bitterness into a system
of love and harmony."1 Such, however, was the judgment
passed by the first Christians upon all who did not join
their own society ; and such still more was the judgment
of their successors on those who lived and died in the sects
and heresies which had issued from it. That very Father,
whose denunciation of the heathen has just been quoted,
9 Ad Deraetr. 4, &c. Oxf. Tr. » Hist. ch. xv.
SECT. II.] THE FOURTH CENTURY. 269
had already declared it even in the third century. " He
who leaves the Church of Christ," he says, " attains not to
Christ's rewards. He is an alien, an outcast, an enemy.
He can no longer have God for a Father, who has not the
Church for a Mother. If any man was able to escape who
remained without the Ark of Noah, then will that man
escape who is out of doors beyond the Church. . . What
sacrifice do they believe they celebrate, who are rivals of
the Priests ? If such men were even killed for confession
of the Christian name, not even by their blood is this stain
washed out. Inexplicable and heavy is the sin of discord,
and is purged by no suffering . . . They cannot dwell with
God who have refused to be of one mind in God's Church ;
a man of such sort may indeed be killed, crowned he
cannot be/'2 And so St. Chrysostom, in the following
century, with an allusion to St. Cyprian's sentiment :
" Though we have achieved ten thousand glorious acts, yet
shall we, if we cut to pieces the fulness of the Church,
suffer punishment no less sore than they who mangled His
body." 3 In like manner St. Augustine seems to consider
that a conversion from idolatry to a schismatical communion
is no gain. " Those whom Donatists baptize, they heal of
the wound of idolatry or infidelity, but inflict a more
grievous stroke in the wound of schism ; for idolaters
among God's people the sword destroyed, but schismatics
the gaping earth devoured."4 Elsewhere, he speaks of
the "sacrilege of schism, which surpasses all wickednesses."4
St. Optatus, too, marvels at the Donatist Parmenian's
inconsistency in maintaining the true doctrine, that
" Schismatics are cut off as branches from the vine, are
destined for punishments, and reserved, as dry wood, for
hell-fire." ' " Let us hate them who are worthy of
hatred," says St. Cyril, " withdraw we from them whom
2 De Unit. 5, 12. 3 Chrys. in Eph. iv. 4 De Baptism, i. 10.
5 c. Ep. Farm. i. 7. 6 De Schism. Donat. i. 10.
270 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
God withdraws from ; let us also say unto God with all
boldness concerning all heretics. ' Do not I hate them, O
Lord, that hate thee ? ' " 7 " Most firmly hold, and doubt
in no wise," says St. Fulgentius, " that every heretic and
schismatic soever, baptized in the name of Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, unless aggregated to the Catholic Church,
how great soever have been his alms, though for Christ's
Name he has even shed his blood, can in no wise be
saved." ' The Fathers ground this doctrine on St. Paul's
words that, though we have knowledge, and give our goods
to the poor, and our body to be burned, we are nothing
without love.9
16.
One more remark shall be made: that the Catholic
teachers, far from recognizing any ecclesiastical relation
as existing between the Sectarian Bishops and Priests, and
their flocks, address the latter immediately, as if those
Bishops did not exist, and call on them to come over to
the Church individually without respect to any one besides ;
and that because it is a matter of life and death. To take
the instance of the Donatists : it was nothing to the purpose
that their Churches in Africa were nearly as numerous as
those of the Catholics, or that they had a case to produce
in their controversy with the Catholic Church ; the very
fact that they were separated from the orbis terrarum was
7 Cat. xvi. 10. 8 De Fid. ad Petr. 39. [82.]
9 [Of course this solemn truth must not be taken apart from the words
of the present Pope, Pius IX., concerning invincible ignorance : " Notum
nobis vobisque est, eos, qui invincibili circa sanctissimam nostram religionem
ignorantia laborant, quique naturalem legem ej usque prsecepta in omnium
cordibus a Deo insculpta sedulo servantes, ac Deo obedire parati, honestam
rectamque vitam agunt, posse, divinte lucis et gratise operante virtute,
aeternam consequi vitam, cum Deus, qui omnium mentes, animos, cogita-
tiones, habitusque plane intuetur, scrutatur et noscit, pro summa sua
bonitate et dementi^,, minime patiatur quempiam aeternis punivi suppliciis,
qui voluntaria) culpae reatum non habeat."]
SECT. II.] THE FOURTH CENTURY. 271
a public, a manifest, a simple, a sufficient argument against
them. " The question is not about your gold and silver,"
says St. Augustine to Glorius and others, a not your
lands, or farms, nor even your bodily health is in peril, but
we address your souls about obtaining eternal life and
fleeing eternal death. Bouse yourself therefore
You see it all, and know it, and groan over it ; yet God
sees that there is nothing to detain you in so pestiferous
and sacrilegious a separation, if you will but overcome your
carnal affection, for the obtaining the spiritual kingdom, and
rid yourselves of the fear of wounding friendships, which
will avail nothing in God's judgment, to escape eternal
punishment. Go, think over the matter, consider what
can be said in answer. . . . No one blots out from heaven
the Ordinance of God, no one blots out from earth the
Church of God : He hath promised, she hath filled, the
whole world." " Some carnal intimacies," he says to his
kinsman Severinus, " hold you where you are. . . . What
avails temporal health or relationship, if with it we neglect
Christ's eternal heritage and our perpetual health ? " "I
ask," he says to Celer, a person of influence, " that you
would more earnestly urge upon your men Catholic Unity
in the region of Hippo." " Why," he says, in the person
of the Church, to the whole Donatist population, " Why
open your ears to the words of men, who say what they
never have been able to prove, and close them to the word
of God, saying, 'Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the
heathen for Thine inheritance '?" At another time he
says to them, " Some of the presbyters of your party have
sent to us to say, ' Retire from our flocks, unless you would
have us kill you.' How much more justly do we say to
them, ' Nay, do you, not retire from, but come in peace, not
to our flocks, but to the flocks of Him whose we are all ; or
if you will not, and are far from peace, then do you
rather retire from flocks, for which Christ shed His
272 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
Blood/ ' " I call on you for Christ's sake/' lie says to a
late pro-consul, " to write me an answer, and to urge
gently and kindly all your people in the district of Sinis
or Hippo into the communion of the Catholic Church."
He publishes an address to the Donatists at another time to
inform them of the defeat of their Bishops in a conference:
" Whoso/' he says, " is separated from the Catholic Church,
however laudably he thinks he is living, by this crime
alone, that he is separated from Christ's Unity, he shall
not have life, but the wrath of God abideth on him."
" Let them believe of the Catholic Church," he writes to
some converts about their friends who were still in schism,
" that is, to the Church diffused over the whole world, rather
what the Scriptures say of it than what human tongues
utter in calumny." The idea of acting upon the Donatists
only as a body and through their bishops, does not appear
to have occurred to St. Augustine at all.1
17.
On the whole, then, we have reason to say, that if there
be a form of Christianity at this day distinguished for its
careful organization, and its consequent power ; if it is
spread over the world ; if it is conspicuous for zealous
maintenance of its own creed; if it is intolerant towards what
it considers error ; if it is engaged in ceaseless war with
all other bodies called Christian ; if it, and it alone, is
called " Catholic " by the world, nay, by those very
bodies, and if it makes much of the title ; if it names them
heretics, and warns them of corning woe, and calls on them
one by one, to come over to itself, overlooking every other
tie ; and if they, on the other hand, call it seducer, harlot,
apostate, Antichrist, devil ; if, however much they differ
one with another, they consider it their common enemy ; if
they strive to unite together against it, and cannot ; if they
i Epp. 43, 52, 57, 76, 105, 112, 141, 144.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 273
are but local ; if they continually subdivide, and it remains
one ; if they fall one after another, and make way for new
sects, and it remains the same ; such a religious commu-
nion is not unlike historical Christianity, as it comes before
us at the Nicene Era.
SECTION III.
THE CHURCH OF THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES.
THE patronage extended by the first Christian Emperors
to Arianism, its adoption by the barbarians who succeeded
to their power, the subsequent expulsion of all heresy
beyond the limits of the Empire, and then again the
Monophysite tendencies of Egypt and part of Syria,
changed in some measure the aspect of the Church, and
claim our further attention. It was still a body in posses-
sion, or approximating to the possession, of the orbis
terrarum ; but it was not simply intermixed with sectaries,
as we have been surveying it in the earlier periods, rather
it lay between or over against large schisms. That same
vast Association, which, and which only,, had existed from
the first, which had been identified by all parties with Chris-
tianity, which had been ever called Catholic by people and
by laws, took a different shape; collected itself in far
greater strength on some points of her extended territory
than on others ; possessed, whole kingdoms with scarcely a
rival ; lost others partially or wholly, temporarily or for
good ; was stemmed in its course here or there by external
obstacles ; and was defied by heresy, in a substantive
shape and in mass, from foreign lands, and with the sup-
port of the temporal power. Thus not to mention the
Arianism of the Eastern Empire in the fourth century, the
whole of the West was possesssed by the same heresy in
T
274 THE CHURCH OF [cH. VI.
the fifth ; and nearly the whole of Asia, east of the
Euphrates, as far as it was Christian, by the Nestorians, in
the centuries which followed ; while the Monophysites had
almost the possession of Egypt, and at times of the whole
Eastern Church. I think it no assumption to call Arian -
ism, Nestorianism, and Eutychianism heresies, or to
identify the contemporary Catholic Church with Chris-
tianity. Now, then, let us consider the mutual relation of
Christianity and heresy under these circumstances.
§ 1. The Arians of the Gothic Race.
No heresy has started with greater violence or more
sudden success than the Arian ; and it presents a still more
remarkable exhibition of these characteristics among the
barbarians than in the civilized world. Even among the
Greeks it had shown a missionary spirit. Theophilus in
the reign of Constantius had introduced the popular heresy,
not without some promising results, to the Sabeans of the
Arabian peninsula; but, under Yalens, Ulphilas became
the apostle of a whole race. He taught the Arian doc-
trine, which he had unhappily learned in the Imperial
Court, first to the pastoral Moesogoths ; who, unlike the
other branches of their family, had multiplied under the
Moesian mountains with neither military nor religious
triumphs. The Visigoths were next corrupted ; by whom
does not appear. It is one of the singular traits in the
history of this vast family of heathens that they so in-
stinctively caught, and so impetuously communicated, and
so fiercely maintained, a heresy, which had excited in the
Empire, except at Constantinople, little interest in the
body of the people. The Yisigoths are said to have been
converted by the influence of Valens ; but Yalens reigned
for only fourteen years, and the barbarian population
which had been admitted to the Empire amounted to
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 275
nearly a million of persons. It is as difficult to trace how
the heresy was conveyed from them to the other barbarian
tribes. Gibbon seems to suppose that the Visigoths acted
the part of missionaries in their career of predatory war-
fare from Thrace to the Pyrenees. But such is the fact,
however it was brought about, that the success in arms
and the conversion to Arianism, of Ostrogoths, Alani,
Suevi, Yandals, and Burgundians stand as concurrent
events in the history of the times ; and by the end of the
fifth century the heresy had been established by the
Visigoths in France and Spain, in Portugal by the Suevi,
in Africa by the Vandals, and by the Ostrogoths in Italy.
For a while the title of Catholic as applied to the Church
seemed a misnomer ; for not only was she buried beneath
these populations of heresy, but that heresy was one, and
maintained the same distinctive tenet, whether at Carthage,
Seville, Toulouse, or Ravenna.
2.
It cannot be supposed that these northern warriors had
attained to any high degree of mental cultivation ; but
they understood their own religion enough to hate the
Catholics, and their bishops were learned enough to hold
disputations for its propagation. They professed to stand
upon the faith of Ariminum, administering Baptism under
an altered form of words, and re-baptizing Catholics
whom they gained over to their sect. It must be added
that, whatever was their cruelty or tyranny, both Goths
and Vandals were a moral people, and put to shame the
Catholics whom they dispossessed. " What can the pre-
rogative of a religious name profit us," says Salvian,
" that we call ourselves Catholic, boast of being the faith-
ful, taunt Goths and Vandals with the reproach of an
heretical appellation, while we live in heretical wicked-
T 2
276 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI
ness ?" The barbarians were chaste, temperate, just, and
devout ; the Yisigoth Theodoric repaired every morning
with his domestic officers to his chapel, where service was
performed by the Arian priests ; and one singular instance
is on record of the defeat of a Visigoth force by the
Imperial troops on a Sunday, when instead of preparing
for battle they were engaged in the religious services of
the day.8 Many of their princes were men of great ability,
as the two Theodorics, Euric and Leovigild.
3.
Successful warriors, animated by a fanatical spirit of re-
ligion, were not likely to be content with a mere profession
of their own creed ; they proceeded to place their own
priests in the religious establishments which they found,
and to direct a bitter persecution against the vanquished
Catholics. The savage cruelties of the Yandal Hunneric
in Africa have often been enlarged upon ; Spain was the
scene of repeated persecutions ; Sicily, too, had its
Martyrs. Compared with these enormities, it was but a
little thing to rob the Catholics of their churches, and
the shrines of their treasures. Lands, immunities, and
jurisdictions, which had been given by the Emperors to
2 De Gubern. Dei, vii. p. 142. Elsewhere, "Apud Aquitanicos qua?
civitas in locupletissiina ac nobilissima sui parte non quasi lupanar fuit ?
Quis potentuin ac divitum non in luto libidiuis vixit ? Haud multum
matrona abest a vilitate servarum, ubi paterfamilias ancillarum maritus
est? Quis autem Aquitanorum divitum non hoc fuit?" (pp. 134, 135.)
" Offenduntur barbari ipsi irnpuritatibus nostris. Esse inter Gothos non
licet scortatorem Gotbum ; soli inter eos prsejudicio nationis ac nominis
permittuntur impuri esse Romani " (p. 137). " Quid ? Hispanias nonne
vel eadem vel majora forsitan vitia perdiderunt ? . . . Accessit hoc ad
manifestandam illic impudicitise damnationem, ut Wandalis potissimum, id
est, pudicis barbaris traderentur" (p. 137), Of Africa and Carthage, "In
urbe Christiana, in urbe ecclesiastica, . . . viri in seinetipsis feminas pro-
fitebantur," &c. (p. 152).
3 Dunham, Hist. Spain, vol. i. p. 112.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 277
the African Church, were made over to the clergy of its
conquerors ; and by the time of Belisarius, the Catholic
Bishops had been reduced to less than a third of their
original number. In Spain, as in Africa, bishops were
driven from their sees, churches were destroyed, cemeteries
profaned, martyries rifled. When it was possible, the
Catholics concealed the relics in caves, keeping up a per-
petual memory of these provisional hiding-places.4 Re-
peated spoliations were exercised upon the property of the
Church. Leovigild applied5 its treasures partly to increase
the splendour of his throne, partly to national works. At
other times, the Arian clergy themselves must have been
the recipients of the plunder : for when Childebert the
Frank had been brought into Spain by the cruelties exer-
cised against the Catholic Queen of the Goths, who was
his sister, he carried away with him from the Arian
churches, as St. Gregory of Tours informs us, sixty
chalices, fifteen patens, twenty cases in which the gospels
were kept, all of pure gold and ornamented with jewels.6
4.
In France, and especially in Italy, the rule of the here-
tical power was much less oppressive ; Theodoric, the
Ostrogoth reigned from the Alps to Sicily, and till the
close of a long reign he gave an ample toleration to his
Catholic subjects. He respected their property, suffered
their churches and sacred places to remain in their hands,
and had about his court -some of their eminent Bishops,
since known as Saints, St. Csesarius of Aries, and St.
Epiphanius of Pavia. Still he brought into the country a
new population, devoted to Arianism, or, as we now
speak, a new Church. " His " march," says Gibbon,
" must be considered as the emigration of an entire
* Aguirr. Concil. t. 2, p. 191. * Dunham, p. 125.
fi Hist. Franc, iii. 10. 1 Ch. 39.
278 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
people ; the wives and children of the Goths, their aged
parents, and most precious effects, were carefully trans-
ported ; and some idea may be formed of the heavy
luggage that now followed the camp by the loss of two
thousand waggons, which had been sustained in a single
action in the war of Epirus/' To his soldiers he assigned
a third of the soil of Italy, and the barbarian families
settled down with their slaves and cattle. The original
number of the Yandal conquerors of Africa had only
been fifty thousand men, but the military colonists of
Italy soon amounted to the number of two hundred
thousand ; which, according to the calculation adopted
by the same author elsewhere, involves a population of a
million. The least that could be expected was, that an
Arian ascendency established through the extent of Italy
would provide for the sufficient celebration of the Arian
worship, and we hear of the Arians having a Church
even in Rome.8 The rule of the Lombards in the north
of Italy succeeded to that of the Goths, — Arians, like
their predecessors, without their toleration. The clergy
whom they brought with them seem to have claimed
their share in the possession of the Catholic churches ;9
and though the Court was converted at the end of thirty
years, many cities in Italy were for some time after-
wards troubled by the presence of heretical bishops.1
The rule of Arianism in France lasted for eighty years ;
in Spain for a hundred and eighty ; in Africa for a
hundred; for about a hundred in Italy. These periods
were not contemporaneous ; but extend altogether from
the beginning of the fifth to the end of the sixth century.
5.
It will be anticipated that the duration of this ascen-
* Greg. Dial. Hi. 30. 9 Ibid. 29.
* Gibbon, Hist. ch. 37.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 279
dency of error had not the faintest tendency to deprive the
ancient Church of the West of the title of Catholic ; and it
is needless to produce evidence of a fact which is on the
very face of the history. The Arians seem never to have
claimed the Catholic name. It is more remarkable that
the Catholics during this period were denoted by the
additional title of "Romans." Of this there are many
proofs in the histories of St. Gregory of Tours, Victor of
Yite, and the Spanish Councils. Thus St. Gregory speaks
of Theodegisilus, a king of Portugal, expressing his incre-
dulity at a miracle^ by saying, "It is the temper of the
Romans, (for," interposes the author, " they call men of
our religion Romans,) and not the power of God."
" Heresy is everywhere an enemy to Catholics," says the
same St. Gregory in a subsequent place, and he proceeds to
illustrate it by the story of a " Catholic woman," who had
a heretic husband, to whom, he says, came " a presbyter of
our religion very Catholic ;" and whom the husband
matched at table with his own Arian presbyter, "that
there might be the priests of each religion " in their house
at once. When they were eating, the husband said to the
Arian, " Let us have some sport with this presbyter of the
Romans." 3 The Arian Count Gomachar, seized on the
lands of the Church of Agde in France, and was attacked
with a fever ; on his recovery, at the prayers of the Bishop,
he repented of having asked for them, observing, " What
will these Romans say now ? that my fever came of taking
their land." 4 When the Vandal Theodoric would have
killed the Catholic Armogastes, after failing to torture
him into heresy, his presbyter dissuaded him, "Jest the
Romans should begin to call him a Martyr." '
2 De Glor. Mart. i. 25. 3 Ibid. 80. 4 Ibid. 79.
s Viet. Vit. i. 14.
280 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
This appellation had two meanings ; one, which will
readily suggest itself, is its use in contrast to the word
"barbarian," as denoting the faith of the Empire, as
" Greek " occurs in St. Paul's Epistles. In this sense it
would more naturally be used by the Romans themselves
than by others. Thus Salvian says, that " nearly all the
Romans are greater sinners than the barbarians ;" 6 and he
speaks of " Roman heretics, of which there is an innume-
rable multitude," 7 meaning heretics within the Empire.
And so St. Gregory the Great complains, that he "had
become Bishop of the Lombards rather than of the
Romans." 8 And Evagrius, speaking even of the East,
contrasts "Romans and barbarians " 9 in his account of St.
Simeon ; and at a later date, and even to this day, Thrace and
part of Asia Minor derive their name from Rome. In like
manner, we find Syrian writers sometimes speaking of the
religion of the Romans, sometimes of the Greeks,1 as
synonymes.
7.
But the word certainly contains also an allusion to the
faith and communion of the Roman See. In this sense
the Emperor Theodosius, in his letter to Acacius of
Beroea, contrasts it with Nestorianism, which was within
the Empire as well as Catholicism ; during the controversy
raised by that heresy, he exhorts him and others to show
themselves " approved priests of the Roman religion." :
Again, when the Ligurian nobles were persuading the
Arian Ricimer to come to terms with Anthemius, the
orthodox representative of the Greek Emperor,3 they
propose to him to send St. Epiphanius as ambassador, a
6 De Gub. D. iv. p. 73. 7 Ibid. v. p. 88. 8 Epp. i. 31.
9 Hist. vi. 23. i Cf. Assera. t. i. p. 351, not. 4, t. 3, p. 393.
2 Baron. Ann. 432, 47. 3 Gibbon, Hist. cb. 36.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 281
man " whose life is venerable to every Catholic and Roman,
and at least amiable in the eyes of a Greek ( Grceculus) if
he deserves the sight of him." 4 It must be recollected, too,
that the Spanish and African Churches actually were in
the closest union with the See of Rome at that time, and
that that intercommunion was the visible ecclesiastical
distinction between them and their Arian rivals. The
chief ground of the Vandal Hunneric's persecution of the
African Catholics seems to have been their connexion with
their brethren beyond the sea,5 which he looked at with
jealousy, as introducing a foreign power into his territory.
Prior to this he had published an edict calling on the " Ho-
moiisian " Bishops (for on this occasion he did not call them
Catholic,) to meet his own bishops at Carthage and treat
concerning the faith, that " their meetings to the seduction
of Christian souls might not be held in the provinces of the
Yandals." 6 Upon this invitation, Eugenius of Carthage
replied, that all the transmarine Bishops of the orthodox
communion ought to be summoned, " in particular because
it is a matter for the whole world, not special to the African
provinces," that "they could not undertake a point of faith
sine universitatis assensu." Hunneric answered that if
Eugenius would make him sovereign of the or bis terrarum,
he would comply with his request. This led Eugenius to
say that the orthodox faith was " the only true faith •"
that the king ought to write to his allies abroad, if he
wished to know it, and that he himself would write to his
brethren for foreign bishops, " who/' he says, " may assist
us in setting before you the true faith, common to them
and to us, and especially the Roman Church, which is the
head of all Churches/7 Moreover, the African Bishops in
their banishment in Sardinia, to the number of sixty, with
St. Fulgentius at their head, quote with approbation the
< Baron. Ann. 471, 18. 5 Viet. Vit. iv. 4.
6 Viet. Vit. ii. 3—15.
282 THE CHURCH OF [CH. Vt.
words of Pope Hormisdas, to the effect that they hold, "on
the point of free will and divine grace, what the Roman,
that is, the Catholic, Church follows and preserves." 7
Again, the Spanish Church was under the superintendence
of the Pope's Vicar8 during the persecutions, whose duty
it was to hinder all encroachments upon " the Apostolical
decrees, or the limits of the Holy Fathers," through the
whole of the country.
8.
Nor was the association of Catholicism with the See of
Home an introduction of that age. The Emperor Gratian,
in the fourth century, had ordered that the Churches
which the Arians had usurped should be restored, (not to
those who held "the Catholic faith," or "the Nicene
Creed," or were " in communion with.the orbis terrarum")
but " who chose the communion of Damasus," 9 the then
Pope. It was St. Jerome's rule, also, in some well-known
passages : — Writing against Ruffinus, who had spoken of
" our faith," he says, " What does he mean by ' his faith '?
that which is the strength of the Roman Church ? or that
which is contained in the volumes of Origen ? If he
answer, 'The Roman/ then we are Catholics who have
borrowed nothing of Origen's error ; but if Origen's blas-
phemy be his faith, then, while he is charging me with
inconsistency, he proves himself to be an heretic." The
other passage, already quoted, is still more exactly to the
point, because it was written on occasion of a schism. The
divisions at Antioch had thrown the Catholic Church
into a remarkable position ; there were two Bishops in the
See, one in connexion with the East, the other with
Egypt and the West, — with which then was "Catholic
Communion " ? St. Jerome has no doubt on the subject : —
7 Aguirr. Cone. t. 2, p. 262. 8 Aguirr. ibid. p. 232.
9 Theod. Hist. v. 2. 1 c. Huff. i. 4.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES.
Writing to St. Damasus, lie says, " Since the East tears
into pieces the Lord's coat, . . . therefore by me is the
chair of Peter to be consulted, and that faith which is
praised by the Apostle's mouth. . . . Though your great-
ness terrifies me, yet your kindness invites me. From the
Priest I ask the salvation of the victim, from the Shepherd
the protection of the sheep. Let us speak without offence ;
I court not the Roman height: I speak with the suc-
cessor of the Fisherman and the disciple of the Cross. I,
who follow none as my chief but Christ, am associated in
communion with thy blessedness, that is, with the See of
Peter. On that rock the Church is built, I know. Whoso
shall eat the Lamb outside that House is profane .... I
know not Yitalis " (the Apollinarian) , " Meletius I reject,
I am ignorant of Paulinus. Whoso gathereth not with
thee, scattereth; that is, he who is not of Christ is of
Antichrist/-'2 Again, "The ancient authority of the
monks, dwelling round about, rises against me ; I mean-
while cry out, If any be joined to Peter's chair he is
9.
Here was what may be considered a dignus vindice nodus,
the Church being divided, and an arbiter wanted. Such
a case had also occurred in Africa in the controversy with
the Donatists. Four hundred bishops, though but in one
region, were a fifth part of the whole Episcopate of
Christendom, and might seem too many for a schism, and
in themselves too large a body to be cut off from God's
inheritance by a mere majority, even had it been over-
whelming. St. Augustine, then, who so often appeals to
the orbis terrarum, sometimes adopts a more prompt criterion.
He tells certain Donatists to whom he writes, that the
Catholic Bishop of Carthage " was able to make light of
2 EP. 15. 3 Ep. 16.
284 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VT.
the thronging multitude of his enemies, when he found
himself by letters of credence joined both to the Roman
Church, in which ever had flourished the principality of
the Apostolical See, and to the other lands whence the
gospel came to Africa itself."4
There are good reasons then for explaining the Gothic
and Arian use of the word " Roman/' when applied to
the Catholic Church and faith, of something beyond its
mere connexion with the Empire, which the barbarians
were assaulting; nor would " Roman" surely be the most
obvious word to denote the orthodox faith, in the mouths
of a people who had learned their heresy from a Roman
Emperor and Court, and who professed to direct their
belief by the great Latin Council of Ariminum.
10.
As then the fourth century presented to us in its ex-
ternal aspect the Catholic Church lying in the midst of
a multitude of sects, all enemies to it, so in the fifth and
sixth we see the same Church in the West lying under
the oppression of a huge, farspreading, and schisinatical
communion. Heresy is no longer a domestic enemy inter-
mingled with the Church, but it occupies its own ground
and is extended over against her, even though on the
same territory, and is more or less organized, and cannot
be so promptly refuted by the simple test of Catholicity.
§ 2. The Nestorians.
The Churches of Syria and Asia Minor were the most
intellectual portion of early Christendom. Alexandria
was but one metropolis in a large region, and contained
the philosophy of the whole Patriarchate ; but Syria
abounded in wealthy and luxurious cities, the creation of
the Seleucidae, where the arts and the schools of Greece
had full opportunities of cultivation. For a time too, for
4 Aug. Epp. 43. 7.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 285
the first two hundred years, as some think, Alexandria
was the only See as well as the only school of Egypt ;
while Syria was divided into smaller dioceses, each of
which had at first an authority of its own, and which,
even after the growth of the Patriarchal power, received
their respective bishops, not from the See of Antioch, but
from their own metropolitan. In Syria too the schools
were private, a circumstance which would tend both to
diversity in religious opinion, and incaution in the expres-
sion of it ; but the sole catechetical school of Egypt was the
organ of the Church, and its Bishop could banish Origen
for speculations which developed and ripened with im-
punity in Syria.
2.
But the immediate source of that fertility in heresy,
which is the unhappiness of the ancient Syrian Church,
was its celebrated Exegetical School. The history of that
School is summed up in the broad characteristic fact, on
the one hand that it devoted itself to the literal and
critical interpretation of Scripture, and on the other that it
gave rise first to the Arian and then to the Nestorian heresy.
If additional evidence be wanted of the connexion of
heterodoxy and biblical criticism in that age, it is found
in the fact that, not long after this coincidence in Syria,
they are found combined in the person of Theodore of
Heraclea, so called from the place both of his birth and
his bishoprick, an able commentator and an active enemy
of St. Athanasius, though a Thracian unconnected except
by sympathy with the Patriarchate of Antioch.
The Antiochene School appears to have risen in the
middle of the third century ; but there is no evidence to
determine whether it was a local institution, or, as is more
probable, a discipline or method characteristic generally of
Syria teaching. Dorotheus is one of its earliest teachers ;
286 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
he is known as a Hebrew scholar, as well as a commenta-
tor on the sacred text, and he was the master of Eusebius
of Caesarea. Lucian, the friend of the notorious Paul of
Samosata, and for three successive Episcopates after him
separated from the Church though afterwards a martyr in
it, was the editor of a new edition of the Septuagint, and
master oC the chief original teachers of Arianism. Eusebius
of Caesarea, Asterius called the Sophist, and Eusebius
of Emesa, Arians of the Nicene period, and Diodorus, a
zealous opponent of Arianism, but the master of Theodore
of Mopsuestia, have all a place in the Exegetical School.
St. Chrysostom and Theodoret, both Syrians, and the
former the pupil of Diodorus, adopted the literal interpre-
tation, though preserved from its abuse. But the princi-
pal doctor of the School was that Theodore, the master of
Nestorius, who has just been mentioned, and who with his
writings, and with the writings of Theodoret against St.
Cyril, and the letter written by Ibas of Edessa to Maris,
was condemned by the fifth Ecumenical Council. Ibas
was the translator into Syriac, and Maris into Persian,
of the books of Theodore and Diodorus ; 5 and thus
they became immediate instruments in the formation
of the great Nestorian school and Church in farther
Asia.
As many as ten thousand tracts of Theodore are said in
this way to have been introduced to the knowledge of the
Christians of Mesopotamia, Adiabene, Babylonia, and the
neighbouring countries. He was called by those Churches
absolutely " the Interpreter," and it eventually became
the very profession of the Nestorian communion to follow
him as such. " The doctrine of all our Eastern Churches/'
says the Council under the Patriarch Marabas, " is founded
on the Creed of Nicsea ; but in the exposition of the
Scriptures we follow St. Theodore." "We must by all
5 Assein. iii. p. 68.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 287
means remain firm to the commentaries of the great
Commentator," says the Council under Sabarjesus ;
" whoso shall in any manner oppose them, or think other-
wise, he he anathema." 6 No one since the beginning of
Christianity, except Origen and St. Augustine, has had
so great influence on his brethren as Theodore.7
3.
The original Syrian School had possessed very marked
characteristics, which it did not lose when it passed into a
new country and into strange tongues. Its comments on
Scripture seem to have been clear, natural, methodical,
apposite, and logically exact. " In all Western AramEea,"
says Lengerke, that is, in Syria, "there was but one
mode of treating whether exegetics or doctrine, the prac-
tical." 8 Thus Eusebius of Caesarea, whether as a dis-
putant or a commentator, is commonly a writer of sense
and judgment; and he is to be referred to the Syrian
school, though he does not enter so far into its temper as
to exclude the mystical interpretation or to deny the
verbal inspiration of Scripture. Again, we see in St.
Chrysostom a direct, straightforward treatment of the
sacred text, and a pointed application of it to things and
persons ; and Theodoret abounds in modes of thinking
and reasoning which without any great impropriety may
be called English. Again, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, though
he does not abstain from allegory, shows the character of
his school by the great stress he lays upon the study of
Scripture, and, I may add, by the peculiar characteristics
of his style, which will be appreciated by a modern
reader.
4.
It would have been well, had the genius of the Syrian
6 Ibid. t. 3, p. 84, note 3. 7 Wegnern, Proleg. in Tbeod. Opp. p. ix.
* De Ephrem S.yr. p. 61.
288 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
theology been ever in the safe keeping of men such as St.
Cyril, St. Chrysostom, and Theodoret ; but in Theodore
of Mopsuestia, nay in Diodorus before him, it developed
into those errors, of which Paul of Samosata had been the
omen on its rise. As its attention was chiefly directed to
the examination of the Scriptures, in its interpretation of
the Scriptures was its heretical temper discovered ; and
though allegory can be made an instrument for evading
Scripture doctrine, criticism may more readily be turned
to the destruction of doctrine and Scripture together.
Theodore was bent on ascertaining the literal sense, an
object with which no fault could be found : but, leading
him of course to the Hebrew text instead of the Septua-
gint, it also led him to Jewish commentators. Jewish
commentators naturally suggested events and objects short
of evangelical as the fulfilment of the prophetical an-
nouncements, and, when it was possible, an ethical sense
instead of a prophetical. The eighth chapter of Proverbs
ceased to bear a Christian meaning, because, as Theodore
maintained, the writer of the book had received the gift,
not of prophecy, but of wisdom. The Canticles must be
interpreted literally ; and then it was but an easy, or
rather a necessary step, to exclude the book from the
Canon. The book of Job too professed to be historical ;
yet what was it really but a Gentile drama ? ' He also
gave up the books of Chronicles and Ezra, and, strange to
say, the Epistle of St. James, though it was contained in
the Peschito Version of his Church. He denied that
Psalms xxii. and Ixix. applied to our Lord ; rather he
limited the Messianic passages of the whole book to four ;
of which the eighth Psalm was one, and the forty-fifth
another. The rest he explained of Hezekiah and Zerub-
babel, without denying that they might be accommodated
to an evangelical sense.1 He explained St. Thomas's,
1 Lengerke, de Ephrem. Syr. pp. 73 — 75.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 289
words, " My Lord and my God," as an exclamation of joy,
and our Lord's " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," as an an-
ticipation of the day of Pentecost. As may be expected
he denied the verbal inspiration of Scripture. Also, he
held that the deluge did not cover the earth ; and, as
others before him, he was heterodox on the doctrine of
original sin, and denied the eternity of punishment.
5.
Maintaining that the real sense of Scripture was, not
the scope of a Divine Intelligence, but the intention of the
mere human organ of inspiration, Theodore was led to
hold, not only that that sense was one in each text, but
that it was continuous and single in a context; that
what was the subject of the composition in one verse
must be the subject in the next, and that if a Psalm wai
historical or prophetical in its commencement, it was the
one or the other to its termination. Even that fulness,
of meaning, refinement of thought, subtle versatility of
feeling, and delicate reserve or reverent suggestiveness,
which poets exemplify, seems to have been excluded from
his idea of a sacred composition. Accordingly, if a Psalm
contained passages which could not be applied to our
Lord, it followed that that Psalm did not properly apply
to Him at all, except by accommodation. Such at least is
the doctrine of Cosmas, a writer of Theodore's school, who
on this ground passes over the twenty-second, sixty-ninth,
and other Psalms, and limits the Messianic to the second,
the eighth, the forty-fifth, and the hundred and tenth.
"David," he says, "did not make common to the servants
what belongs to the Lord 2 Christ, but what was proper to
the Lord he spoke of the Lord, and what was proper to
the servants, of servants."3 Accordingly the twenty -
2 5eo-7r^Tou, vid. La Croze, Thesaur. Ep. t. 3, § 145.
s Montf. Coll. Nov. t. 2, p. 227.
U
290 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
second could not properly belong to Christ, because in the
beginning it spoke of the (C verba delictorum meorum." A
remarkable consequence would follow from this doctrine,
that as Christ was to be separated from His Saints, so the
Saints were to be separated from Christ ; and an opening
was made for a denial of the doctrine of their cultus, though
this denial in the event has not been developed among the
Nestorians. But a more serious consequence is latently con-
tained in it, and nothing else than the Nestorian heresy, viz.
that our Lord's manhood is not so intimately included in
His Divine Personality that His brethren according to the
flesh may be associated with the Image of the One Christ.
Here St. Chrysostom pointedly contradicts the doctrine of
Theodore, though his fellow-pupil and friend ;4 as does St.
Ephrem, though a Syrian also ; 5 and St. Basil.6
6.
One other peculiarity of the Syrian school, viewed as
independent of Nestorius, should be added : — As it tended
to the separation of the Divine Person of Christ from His
manhood, so did it tend to explain away His Divine
Presence in the Sacramental elements. Ernesti seems to
consider the school, in modern language, Sacranientarian :
and certainly some of the most cogent testimonies brought
by moderns against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucha-
rist are taken from writers who are connected with that
school ; as the author, said to be St. Chrysostom, of the
Epistle to Caesarius, Theodoret in his Eranistes, and
Facundus. Some countenance too is given to the same
view of the Eucharist, at least in some parts of his works,
by Origen, whose language concerning the Incarnation also
leans to what was afterwards Nestorianism. To these may
4 Roseninuller, Hist. Interpr. t. 3, p. 278.
» Lengerke, de Ephr. Syr. pp. 165—167.
6 Ernest, de Proph. Mess. p. 462.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 291
be added Eusebius,7 who, far removed, as he was, from
that heresy, was a disciple of the Syrian school. The lan-
guage of the later Nestorian writers seems to have been of
the same character.8 Such then on the whole is the
character of that theology of Theodore which passed from
Cilicia and Antioch to Edessa first, and then to Nisibis.
7.
Edessa, the metropolis of Mesopotamia, had remained an
Oriental city till the third century, when it was made a
Eoman colony by Caracalla.9 Its position on the confines
of two empires gave it great ecclesiastical importance, as
the channel by which the theology of Rome and Greece
was conveyed to a family of Christians, dwelling in con-
tempt and persecution amid a still heathen world. It was
the seat of various schools ; apparently of a Greek school,
where the classics were studied as well as theology, where
Eusebius of Emesa l had originally been trained, and
where perhaps Protogenes taught.2 There were Syrian
schools attended by heathen and Christian youths in com-
mon. The cultivation of the native language had been an
especial object of its masters since the time of Yespasian,
so that the pure and refined dialect went by the name of
the Edessene.3 At Edessa too St. Ephrem formed his own
Syrian school, which lasted long after him ; and there too
was the celebrated Persian Christian school, over which
Maris presided, who has been already mentioned as the
translator of Theodore into Persian.4 Even in the time of
the predecessor of Ibas in the See (before A.D. 435) the
Kestorianism of this Persian School was so notorious that
"' Eccl. Theol. iii. 12.
8 Professor Lee's Serin. Oct. 1838, pp. 144—152.
9 Noris. Opp. t. 2, p. 112. l August!. Euseb. Em. Opp.
2 Asseman. p. cmxxv. 3 Hoffman, Gram. Syr. Proleg. § 4.
4 The educated Persians were also acquainted with Syriac. Assem. t. i.
p. 351, not.
U 2
292 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
Rabbula the Bishop had expelled its masters and scholars ;5
and they, taking refuge in a country which might be
called their own, had introduced the heresy to the Churches
subject to the Persian King.
8.
Something ought to be said of these Churches ; though
little is known except what is revealed by the fact, in
itself of no slight value, that they had sustained two
persecutions at the hands of the heathen government in
the fourth and fifth centuries. One testimony is extant
as early as the end of the second century, to the effect that
in Parthia, Media, Persia, and Bactria there were Chris-
tians who " were not overcome by evil laws and customs." *
In the early part of the fourth century, a bishop of Persia
attended the IXicene Council, and about the same time
Christianity is said to have pervaded nearly the whole of
Assyria.7 Monachism had been introduced there before
the middle of the fourth century, and shortly after com-
menced that fearful persecution in which sixteen thousand
Christians are said to have suffered. It lasted thirty
years, and is said to have recommenced at the end of
the Century. The second persecution lasted for at least
another thirty years of the next, at the very time when
the Nestorian troubles were in progress in the Empire.
Trials such as these show the populousness as well as the
faith of the Churches in those parts, — and the number of
the Sees, for the names of twenty-seven Bishops are pre-
served who suffered in the former persecution. One of
them was apprehended together with sixteen priests, nine
deacons, besides monks and nuns of his diocese ; another
with twenty-eight companions, ecclesiastics or regulars ;
another with one hundred ecclesiastics of different orders ;
5 Asseman, p. Ixx. 6 Euseb. Prsep. vi. 10.
7 Tillemont, Mem. t. 7, p. 77.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 293
another with one hundred and twenty-eight ; another
with his chorepiscopus and two hundred and fifty of his
clergy. Such was the Church, consecrated by the blood
of BO many martyrs, which immediately after its glorious
confession fell a prey to the theology of Theodore ; and
which through a succession of ages manifested the energy,
when it had lost the pure orthodoxy of Saints.
9.
The members of the Persian school, who had been
driven out of Edessa by Rabbula, found a wide field open
for their exertions under the pagan government with
which they had taken refuge. The Persian monarchs, who
had often prohibited by edict 8 the intercommunion of the
Church under their sway with the countries towards the
west, readily extended their protection to exiles, whose
very profession was the means of destroying its Catho-
licity. Barsumas, the most energetic of them, was placed
in the metropolitan See of Nisibis, where also the
fugitive school was settled under the presidency of
another of their party ; while Maris was promoted to the
See of Ardaschir. The primacy of the Church had from
an early period belonged to the See of Seleucia in Baby-
lonia. Catholicus was the title appropriated to its occu-
pant, as well as to the Persian Primate, as being depu-
ties of the Patriarch of Antioch, and was derived
apparently from, the Imperial dignity so called, denoting
their function as Procurators- general, or officers in chief
for the regions in which they were placed. Acacius,
another of the Edessene party, was put into this prin-
cipal See,, and suffered, if he did not further, the innova-
tions of Barsumas. The mode by which the latter effected
these measures has been left on record by an enemy.
(C Barsumas accused Babuaeus, the Catholicus, before King
8 Gibbon, ch. 47.
294 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
Pherozes, whispering, * These men hold the faith of the
Romans, and are their spies. Give me power against them
to arrest them.' "g It is said that in this way he obtained
the death of Babuaeus, whom Acacius succeeded. When
a minority resisted l the process of schism, a persecution
followed. The death of seven thousand seven hundred
Catholics is said by Monophysite authorities to have been
the price of the severance of the Chaldaic Churches from
Christendom.2 Their loss was compensated in the eyes of
the government by the multitude of Nestorian fugitives,
who flocked into Persia from the Empire, numbers of them
industrious artisans, who sought a country where their
own religion was in the ascendant.
10.
That religion was founded, as we have already seen,
in the literal interpretation of Holy Scripture, of which
Theodore was the principal teacher. The doctrine, in
which it formally consisted, is known by the name of
Nestorianism : it lay in the ascription of a human as well
as a Divine Personality to our Lord ; and it showed itself in
denying the title of " Mother of God/' or tfeoro/co?, to St.
Mary. As to our Lord's Personality, it is to be observed
that the question of language came in, which always
serves to perplex a subject and make a controversy seem a
matter of words. The native Syrians made a distinction
between the word "Person," and "Prosopon/' which
stands for it in Greek ; they allowed that there was one
Prosopon or Parsopa, as they called it, and they held that
there were two Persons. If it is asked what they meant
by parsopa, the answer seems to be, that they took the
word merely in the sense of character or aspect, a sense
familiar to the Greek prosopon, and quite irrelevant as a
9 Asseman. p. Ixxviii. ] Gibbon, ibid.
2 Asseman. t. 2, p. 403, t. 3, p. 393.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 295
guarantee of their orthodoxy. It follows moreover that,
since the aspect of a thing is its impression upon the
beholder, the personality to which they ascribed unity
must have lain in our Lord's manhood, and not in His
Divine Nature. But it is hardly worth while pursuing
the heresy to its limits. Next, as to the phrase " Mother
of God," they rejected it as unscriptural ; they maintained
that St. Mary was Mother of the humanity of Christ,
not of the Word, and they fortified themselves by the
Nicene Creed, in which no such title is ascribed to her.
11.
Whatever might be the obscurity or the plausibility of
their original dogma, there is nothing obscure or attractive
in the developments, whether of doctrine or of practice, in
which it issued. The first act of the exiles of Edessa, on
their obtaining power in the Chaldean communion, was. to
abolish the celibacy of the clergy, or, in Gibbon's forcible
words, to allow " the public and reiterated nuptials of the
priests, the bishops, and even the patriarch himself/'
Barsumas, the great instrument of the change of religion,
was the first to set an example of the new usage, and is
even said by a Nestorian writer to have married a nun.3
He passed a Canon at Councils, held at Seleucia and
elsewhere, that bishops and priests might marry, and
might renew their wives as often as they lost them. The
Catholicus who followed Acacius went so far as to extend
the benefit of the Canon to Monks, that is, to destroy the
Monastic order ; and his two successors availed themselves
of this libertjr, and are recorded to have been fathers. A
restriction, however, was afterwards placed upon the
Catholicus, and upon the Episcopal order.
3 Asseman. t. 3, p. 67.
296 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
12.
Such were the circumstances, and such the principles,
under which the See of Seleucia became the Rome of
the East. In the course of time the Catholicus took on
himself the loftier and independent title of Patriarch
of Babylon; and though Seleucia was changed for
Ctesiphon and for Bagdad,4 still the name of Babylon
was preserved from first to last as a formal or ideal
Metropolis. In the time of the Caliphs, it was at the head
of as many as twenty-five Archbishops ; its Communion
extended from China to Jerusalem ; and its numbers, with
those of the Monophysites, are said to have surpassed those
of the Greek and Latin Churches together. The Nes-
torians seemed to have been unwilling, like the Novatians,
to be called by the name of their founder,* though they
confessed it had adhered to them ; one instance may be
specified of their assuming the name of Catholic,6 but
there is nothing to show it was given them by others.
" From the conquest of Persia," says Gibbon, " they
carried their spiritual arms to the North, the East, and
the South ; and the simplicity of the Gospel was fashioned
and painted with the colours of the Syriac theology. In
the sixth century, according to the report of a Nestorian
traveller, Christianity was successfully preached to the
Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the Per-
sarmenians, the Medes, and the Elamites : the Barbaric
Churches from the gulf of Persia to the Caspian Sea were
almost infinite ; and their recent faith was conspicuous in
the number and sanctity of their monks and martyrs.
The pepper coast of Malabar and the isles of the ocean,
Socotra and Ceylon, were peopled with an increasing
multitude of Christians, and the bishops and clergy of
those sequestered regions derived their ordination from
« Gibbon, ibid. 5 Assem. p. Ixxvi. 6 Ibid. t. 3, p. 441.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AXD SIXTH CENTURIES. 297
the Catholicus of Babylon. In a subsequent age, the zeal
oftheNestorians overleaped the limits which had confined
the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians.
The missionaries of Balch and Samarcand pursued without
fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated
themselves into the camps of the valleys of Imaus and the
banks of the Selinga." 7
§ 3. The Monophysites.
Eutyches was Archimandrite, or Abbot, of a Monastery
in the suburbs of Constantinople ; he was a man of
unexceptionable character, and was of the age of seventy
years, and had been Abbot for thirty, at the date of his
unhappy introduction into ecclesiastical history. He had
been the friend and assistant of St. Cyril of Alexandria,
and had lately taken part against Ibas, Bishop of Edessa,
whose name has occurred in the above account of the
Nestorians. For some time he had been engaged in
teaching a doctrine concerning the Incarnation, which he
maintained indeed to be none other than that of St. Cyril's
in his controversy with Nestorius, but which others
denounced as an heresy in the opposite extreme, and
substantially a reassertion of Apollinarianism. The sub-
ject was brought before a Council of Constantinople,
under the presidency of Flavian, the Patriarch, in the year
448 ; and Eutyches was condemned by the assembled
Bishops of holding the doctrine of One, instead of Two
Natures in Christ.
2.
It is scarcely necessary for our present purpose to
ascertain accurately what he held, and there has been a
great deal of controversy on the subject ; partly from
confusion between him and his successors, partly from the
7 Ch. 47.
298 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
indecision or the ambiguity which commonly attaches to
the professions of heretics. If a statement must here be
made of the doctrine of Eutyches himself, in whom the
controversy began, let it be said to consist in these two
tenets : — in maintaining, first, that " before the Incarnation
there were two natures, after their union one," or that our
Lord was of or from two natures, but not in two ; — and,
secondly, that His flesh was not of one substance with ours,
that is, not of the substance of the Blessed Virgin. Of
these two points, he seemed willing to abandon the second,
but was firm in his maintenance of the first. But let us
return to the Council of Constantinople.
In his examination Eutyches allowed that the Holy
Virgin was consubstantial with us, and that " our Grod was
incarnate of her ;" but he would not allow that He was
therefore, as man, consubstantial with us, his notion
apparently being that union with the Divinity had changed
what otherwise would have been human nature. However,
when pressed, he said, that, though up to that day he had
not permitted himself to discuss the nature of Christ, or to
affirm that " God's body is man's body though it was
human," yet he would allow, if commanded, our Lord's
consubstantiality with us. Upon this Flavian observed
that " the Council was introducing no innovation, but
declaring the faith of the Fathers." To his other position,
however, that our Lord had but one nature after the
Incarnation, he adhered : when the Catholic doctrine was
put before him, he answered, " Let St. Athanasius be
read ; you will find nothing of the kind in him."
His condemnation followed : it was signed by twenty- two
Bishops and twenty- three Abbots ; l among the former
were Flavian of Constantinople, Basil metropolitan of
Seleucia in Isauria, the metropolitans of Amasea in Pon-
i Fleur. Hist, xxvii. 29.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 299
tus, and Marcianopolis in Mcesia, and the Bishop of Cos,
the Pope's minister at Constantinople.
3.
Eutyches appealed to the Pope of the day, St. Leo, who
at first hearing took his part. He wrote to Flavian that,
" judging by the statement of Eutyches, he did not see
with what justice he had been separated from the com-
munion of the Church." " Send therefore," he continued,
" some suitable person to give us a full account of what
has occurred, and let us know what the new error is."
St. Flavian, who had behaved with great forbearance
throughout the proceedings, had not much difficulty in
setting the controversy before the Pope in its true light.
Eutyches was supported by the Imperial Court, and by
Dioscorus the Patriarch of Alexandria ; the proceedings
therefore at Constantinople were not allowed to settle the
question. A general Council was summoned for the
ensuing summer at Ephesus, where the Third Ecumenical
Council had been held twenty years before against
Nestorius. It was attended by sixty metropolitans, ten
from each of the great divisions of the East ; the whole
number of bishops assembled amounted to one hundred and
thirty-five.2 Dioscorus was appointed President by the
Emperor, and the object of the assembly was said to be
the settlement of a question of faith which had arisen
between Flavian and Eutyches. St. Leo, dissatisfied with
the measure altogether, nevertheless sent his legates, but
with the object, as their commission stated, and a letter he
addressed to the Council, of " condemning the heresy, and
reinstating Eutyches if he retracted." His legates took
precedence after Dioscorus and before the other Patriarchs.
He also published at this time his celebrated Tome on the
Incarnation, in a letter addressed to Flavian.
2 Gibbon, ch. 47.
300 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
The proceedings which followed were of so violent a
character, that the Council has gone down to posterity
under the name of the Latrocinium or " Gang of Robbers/7
Eut}rches was honourably acquitted, and his doctrine
received ; but the assembled Fathers showed some back-
wardness to depose St. Flavian. Dioscorus had been
attended by a multitude of monks, furious zealots for the
Monophysite doctrine from Syria and Egypt, and by an
armed force. These broke into the Church at his call ;
Flavian was thrown down and trampled on, and received
injuries of which he died the third day after. The Pope's
legates escaped as they could; and the Bishops were
compelled to sign a blank paper, which was afterwards filled
up with the condemnation of Flavian. These outrages,
however, were subsequent to the Synodical acceptance of
the Creed of Eutyches, which seems to have been the
spontaneous act of the assembled Fathers. The proceedings
ended by Dioscorus excommunicating the Pope, and the
Emperor issuing an edict in approval of the decision of the
Council.
4.
Before continuing the narrative, let us pause awhile to
consider what it has already brought before us. An aged
and blameless man, the friend of a Saint, and him the
great champion of the faith against the heresy of his day,
is found in the belief and maintenance of a doctrine, which
he declares to be the very doctrine which that Saint taught
in opposition to that heresy. To prove it, he and his
friends refer to the very words of St. Cyril ; Eustathius
of Berytus quoting from him at Ephesus as follows : " We
must not then conceive two natures, but one nature of the
Word incarnate." 3 Moreover, it seems that St. Cyril had
been called to account for this very phrase, and had
8 Concil. Hard. t. 2, p. 127.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 301
appealed more than once to a passage, which is extant as
he quoted it, in a work by St. Athanasius.4 Whether the
passage in question is genuine is very doubtful, but that
is not to the purpose ; for the phrase which it contains is
also attributed by St. Cyril to other Fathers, and was
admitted by Catholics generally, as by St. Flavian, who
deposed Eutyches, nay was indirectly adopted by the
Council of Chalcedon itself.
5.
But Eutyches did not merely insist upon a phrase ; he
appealed for his doctrine to the Fathers generally ; "I have
read the blessed Cyril, and the holy Fathers, and the holy
Athanasius," he says at Constantinople, " that they said,
' Of two natures before the union/ but that ' after the union '
they said ' but one/ " 5 In his letter to St. Leo, he appeals
in particular to Pope Julius, Pope Felix, St. Gregory Thau-
maturgus, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Basil, Atticus, and St.
Proclus. He did not appeal to them unreservedly certainly,
as shall be presently noticed ; he allowed that they might
err, and perhaps had erred, in their expressions : but it is
plain, even from what has been said, that there could be
no consensus against him, as the word is now commonly
understood. It is also undeniable that, though the word
" nature " is applied to our Lord's manhood by St.
Ambrose, St. Gregory Nazianzen and others, yet on the
whole it is for whatever reason avoided by the previous
Fathers ; certainly by St. Athanasius, who uses the words
"manhood/' "flesh/1' "the man/' " economy," where a
later writer would have used " nature :" and the same is
true of St. Hilary.6 In like manner, the Athanasian
Creed, written, as it is supposed, some twenty years before
4 Petav. de Incarn. iv. 6, § 4. 5 Concil. Hard. t. 2, p. 168.
6 Vid. Athan. Oxf. trans, p. 345, note g, p. 480, note d. [and on the
general subject the Author's Theol. Tracts, art. iv.]
302 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
the date of Eutyches, does not contain the word " nature."
Much might be said on the plausibility of the defence,
which Eutyches might have made for his doctrine from
the history and documents of the Church before his
time.
6.
Further, Eutyches professed to subscribe heartily the
decrees of the Council of Nicaea and Ephesus, and his
friends appealed to the latter of these Councils and to pre-
vious Fathers, in proof that nothing could be added to the
Creed of the Church. " I," he says to St. Leo, " even
from my elders have so understood, and from my child-
hood have so been instructed, as the holy and Ecumenical
Council at Mcaea of the three hundred and eighteen most
blessed Bishops settled the faith, and which the holy
Council held at Ephesus maintained and defined anew as
the only faith ; and I have never understood otherwise
than as the right or only true orthodox faith hath enjoined/'
He says at the Latrocinium, " When I declared that my
faith was conformable to the decision"of Nicaea, confirmed
at Ephesus, they demanded that I should add some words
to it ; and I, fearing to act contrary to the decrees of the
First Council of Ephesus and of the Council of Nicaea,
desired that your holy Council might be made acquainted
with it, since I was ready to submit to whatever you should
approve/' 7 Dioscorus states the matter more strongly :
" We have heard," he says, " what this Council " of
Ephesus " decreed, that if any one affirm or opine any-
thing, or raise any question, beyond the Creed aforesaid "
of Nicaea, " he is to be condemned." ' It is remarkable
' Fleury, Oxf. tr. xxvii. 39.
8 Ibid. 41. In like manner, St. Athanasius in the foregoing age had
said, " The faith confessed at Nicsea by the Fathers, according to the
Scriptures, is sufficient for the overthrow of all misbelief." ad Epict. init.
Elsewhere, however, he explains his statement, " The decrees of Nioaea are
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 303
that the Council of Ephesus, which laid down this rule,
had itself sanctioned the Theotocos, an addition, greater
perhaps than any before or since, to the letter of the
primitive faith.
7.
Further, Eutyches appealed to Scripture, and denied that
a human nature was there given to our Lord ; and this
appeal obliged him in consequence to refuse an uncondi-
tional assent to the Councils and Fathers, though he so
confidently spoke about them at other times. It was
urged against him that the Nicene Council itself had
introduced into the Creed extra-scriptural terms. " ' I have
never found in Scripture/ he said/' according to one of
the Priests who were sent to him, " ' that there are two
natures.' I replied, ' Neither is the Consubstantiality/ "
(the Homoiision of Nicaea,) " ' to be found in the Scriptures,
but in the Holy Fathers, who well understood them and
faithfully expounded them/ " 9 Accordingly on another
occasion, a report was made of him, that te he professed
himself ready to assent to the Exposition of Faith made
by the Holy Fathers of the Nicene and Ephesine Councils
and he engaged to subscribe their interpretations. How-
ever, if there were any accidental fault or error in any
expressions which they made, this he would neither blame
nor accept ; but only search the Scriptures, as being
surer than the expositions of the Fathers ; that since the
time of the Incarnation of God the Word . . he wor-
right, and sufficient for the overthrow of all heresy, especially the Arian."
ad. Max. fin. St. Gregory Nazianzen, in like manner, appeals to Nicsea ;
but he " adds an explanation on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit which was
left deficient by the Fathers, because the question had not then been raised."
Ep. 102, init. This exclusive maintenance, and yet extension of the Creed,
according to the exigences of the times, is instanced in other Fathers.
Vid. Athan. Oxf. tr. p. 49, note p.
9 Fleury, ibid. 27.
304 THE CHURCH OF [CH VI.
shipped one Nature . . . that the doctrine that our Lord
Jesus Christ came of Two Natures personally united, this
it was that he had learned from the expositions of the
Holy Fathers ; nor did he accept, if ought was read to
him from any author to [another] effect, because the Holy
Scriptures, as he said, were better than the teaching of the
Fathers."1 This appeal to the Scriptures will remind us
of what has lately been said of the school of Theodore in
the history of Nestorianism, and of the challenge of the
Arians to St. Avitus before the Gothic King.2 It had
also been the characteristic of heresy in the antecedent
period. St. Hilary brings together a number of instances
in point, from the history of Marcellus, Photinus, Sabellius,
Montanus, and Manes ; then he adds, " They all speak
Scripture without the sense of Scripture, and profess a
faith without faith." 3
8.
Once more ; the Council of the Latrocinium, however
tyrannized over by Dioscorus in the matter of St. Flavian,
certainly did acquit Eutyches and accept his doctrine
canonically, and, as it would appear, cordially; though
their change at Chalcedon, and the subsequent variations
of the East, make it a matter of little moment how they
decided. The Acts of Constantinople were read to the
Fathers of the Latrocinium ; when they came to the part
where Eusebius of Doryleeum, the accuser of Eutyches,
asked him, whether he confessed Two Natures after the
Incarnation, and the Consubstantiality according to the
flesh, the Fathers broke in upon the reading : — ' ' Away with
Eusebius ; burn him ; burn him alive ; cut him in two ;
1 Concil. Hard. t. 2, p. 141. [A negative is omitted in the Greek, but
inserted in the Latin.]
2 supr. p. 245.
3 Ad Const, ii. 9. Vid. Athan. Ar. Oxf. tr. p. 386, note.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 305
as he divided, so let him be divided." The Council seems
to have been unanimous, with the exception of the Pope's
Legates, in the restoration of Eutyches ; a more complete
decision can hardly be imagined.
It is true the whole number of signatures now extant,
one hundred and eight, may seem small out of a thousand,
the number of Sees in the East; but the attendance of
Councils always bore a representative character. The
whole number of East and West was about eighteen
hundred, yet the second Ecumenical Council was attended
by only one hundred and fifty, which is but a twelfth part
of the whole number ; the Third Council by about two
hundred, or a ninth ; the Council of Nicsea itself
numbered only three hundred and eighteen Bishops.
Moreover, when we look through the names subscribed to
the Synodal decision, we find that the misbelief, or mis-
apprehension, or weakness, to which this great offence
must be attributed, was no local phenomenon, but the
unanimous sin of every patriarchate and every school of
the East. Three out of the four patriarchs were in favour
of the heresiarch, the fourth being on his trial. Of these
Domnus of Antioch and Juvenal of Jerusalem acquitted
him, on the ground of his confessing the faith of ^sTicaea
and Ephesus : and Domnus was a man of the fairest and
purest character, and originally a disciple of St. Eu-
themius, however inconsistent on this occasion, and
ill-advised in former steps of his career. Dioscorus,
violent and bad man as he showed himself, had been
Archdeacon to St. Cyril, whom he attended at the Council
of Ephesus ; and was on this occasion supported by those
Churches which had so nobly stood by their patriarch
Athanasius in the great Arian conflict. These three
Patriarchs were supported by the Exarchs of Ephesus and
Caesarea in Cappadocia ; and both of these as well as
4 Concil. Hard. t. 2, p. 162.
X
306 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
Domnus and Juvenal, "were supported in turn by their
subordinate Metropolitans. Even the Sees under the
influence of Constantinople, which was the remaining
sixth division of the East, took part with Eutyches.
Thus among the signatures to his acquittal are the
Bishops of Dyrrachium, of Heraclea in Macedonia, of
Messene in the Peloponese, of Sebaste in Armenia, of
Tarsus, of Damascus, of Berytus, of Bostra in Arabia, of
Amida in Mesopotamia, of Himeria in Orshoene, of
Babylon, of Arsinoe in Egypt, and of Gyrene. The
Bishops of Palestine, of Macedonia, and of Achaia, where
the keen eye of St. Athanasius had detected the doctrine
in its germ, while Apollinarianism was but growing into
form, were his actual partisans. Barsumas, a Syrian
Abbot, ignorant of Greek, attended the Latrociniunx, as
the representative of the monks of his nation, whom he
formed into a force, material or moral, of a thousand
strong, and whom at that infamous assembly he cheered
on to the murder of St. Flavian.
9.
" Such was the state of Eastern Christendom in the year
449 ; a heresy, appealing to the Fathers, to the Creed,
and, above all, to Scripture, was by a general Council,
professing to be Ecumenical, received as true in the person
of its promulgator. If the East could determine a matter
of faith independently of the West, certainly the Mono-
physite heresy was established as Apostolic truth in all its
provinces from Macedonia to Egypt.
There has been a time in the history of Christianity,
when it had been Athanasius against the world, and the
world against Athanasius. The need and straitness of
the Church had been 'great, and one man was raised up
for her deliverance. In this second necessity, who was
the destined champion of her who cannot fail ? Whence
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 307
did he come, and what was his name ? He came with an
augury of victory upon him, which even Athanasius could
not show ; it was Leo, Bishop of Rome.
10.
Leo's augury of success, which even Athanasius had
not, was this, that he was seated in the chair of St.
Peter and the heir of his prerogatives. In the very
beginning of the controversy, St. Peter Chrysologus had
urged this grave consideration upon Eutyches himself, in
words which have already been cited : " I exhort you, my
venerable brother/' he had said, "to submit yourself
in everything to what has been written by the blessed
Pope of Rome ; for St. Peter, who lives and presides in
his own See, gives the true faith to those who seek it."
This voice had come from Ravenna, and now after the
Latrocinium it was echoed back from the depths of Syria
by the learned Theodoret. " That all-holy See," he says
in a letter to one of the Pope's Legates, " has the office of
heading (rjje/jLoviav) the whole world's Churches for many
reasons ; and above all others, because it has remained free
of the communion of heretical taint, and no one of hetero-
dox sentiments hath sat in it, but it hath preserved the
Apostolic grace unsullied.'' ' And a third testimony in
encouragement of the faithful at the same dark moment
issued from the Imperial court of the West. " We are
bound," says Yalentinian to the Emperor of the East, " to
preserve inviolate in our times the prerogative of particu-
lar reverence to the blessed Apostle Peter ; that the most
blessed Bishop of Rome, to whom Antiquity assigned the
priesthood over all (Kara TTCIVTWV) may have place and
opportunity of judging concerning the faith and the
priests." 7 Nor had Leo himself been wanting at the
5 Fleury, Hist. Oxf. tr. xxvii. 37. 6 Ep. 116.
7 Cone. Hard. t. 2, p. 36.
x 2
308 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
same time in "the confidence" he had " obtained from
the most blessed Peter and head of the Apostles, that he
had authority to defend the truth for the peace of the
Church." ! Thus Leo introduces us to the Council of Chal-
cedon, by which he rescued the East from a grave heresy.
11.
The Council met on the 8th of October, 451, and was
attended by the largest number of Bishops of any
Council before or since ; some say by as many as six
hundred and thirty. Of these, only four came from the
West, two Roman Legates and two Africans.9
Its proceedings were opened by the Pope's Legates,
who said that they had it in charge from the Bishop of
Rome, "which is the head of all the Churches," to demand
that Dioscorus should not sit, on the ground that "he
had presumed to hold a Council without the authority of
the Apostolic See, which had never been done nor was
lawful to do." l This was immediately allowed them.
The next act of the Council was to give admission to
Theodoret, who had been deposed at the Latrocinium.
The Imperial officers present urged his admission, on the
ground that " the most holy Archbishop Leo hath restored
him to the Episcopal office, and the most pious Emperor
hath ordered that he should assist at the holy Council."2
Presently, a charge was brought forward against
Dioscorus, that, though the Legates had presented a letter
from the Pope to the Council, it had not been read.
Dioscorus admitted not only the fact, but its relevancy ; but
alleged in excuse that he had twice ordered it to be read in
vain.
In the course of the reading of the Acts of the
Latrocinium and Constantinople, a number of Bishops
8 Ep. 43. 9 Fleury, Hist. Oxf. tr. xxviiL 17, note L
1 Concil. Hard. t. 2, p. 68. 2 Fleury, Oxf. tr. xxviii. 2, 3.
SECT. III.] ' THE FIFTH AKD SIXTH CENTURIES. 309
moved from rthe side of Dioscorus and placed themselves
with the opposite party. When Peter, Bishop of Corinth,
crossed over, the Orientals whom he joined shouted,
" Peter thinks as does Peter ; orthodox Bishop, welcome."
12.
In the second Session it was the duty of the Fathers
to draw up a confession of faith condemnatory of the
heresy. A committee was formed for the purpose, and the
Creed of Mcsea and Constantinople was read ; then some
of the Epistles of St. Cyril ; lastly, St. Leo's Tome, which
had been passed over in silence at the Latrocinium. Some
discussion followed upon the last of these documents, but
at length the Bishops cried out, " This is the faith of the
Fathers ; this is the faith of the Apostles : we all believe
thus ; the orthodox believe thus ; anathema to him who
does not believe thus. Peter has thus spoken through
Leo ; the Apostles taught thus/' Eeadings from the other
Fathers followed ; and then some days were allowed for
private discussion, before drawing up the confession of faith
which was to set right the heterodoxy of the Latrocinium.
During the interval, Discorus was tried and condemned ;
sentence was pronounced against him by the Pope's
Legates, and ran thus : " The most holy Archbishop of
Rome, Leo, through us and this present Council, with the
Apostle St. Peter, who is the rock and foundation of the
Catholic Church and of the orthodox faith, deprives him
of the Episcopal dignity and every sacerdotal ministry."
In the fourth Session the question of the definition of
faith came on again, but the Council got no further than
this, that it received the definitions of the three previous
Ecumenical Councils ; it would not add to them what
Leo required. One hundred and sixty Bishops however
subscribed his Tome.
310 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
13.
In the fifth Session the question came on once more ;
some sort of definition of faith was the result of the labours
of the committee, and was accepted by the great majority
of the Council. The Bishops cried out, " We are all satis-
fied with the definition ; it is the faith of the Fathers :
anathema to him who thinks otherwise : drive out the
Nestorians." When objectors appeared, Anatolius, the
new Patriarch of Constantinople, asked " Did not every one
yesterday consent to the definition of faith ?" on which
the Bishops answered, " Every one consented ; we do not
believe otherwise ; it is the Faith of the Fathers ; let it be
set down that Holy Mary is the Mother of God : let this
be added to the Creed ; put out the Nestorians." 3 The ob-
jectors were the Pope's Legates, supported by a certain
number of Orientals : those clear-sighted, firm-minded
Latins understood full well what and what alone was the
true expression of orthodox doctrine under the emergency
of the existing heresy. They had been instructed to induce
the Council to pass a declaration to the effect, that Christ
was not only " of," but " in " two natures. However, they
did not enter upon disputation on the point, but they used
a more intelligible argument : If the Fathers did not
consent to the letter of the blessed Bishop Leo, they
would leave the Council and go home. The Imperial
officers took the part of the Legates. The Council how-
ever persisted : " Every one approved the definition ; let
it be subscribed : he who refuses to subscribe it is a
heretic/' They even proceeded to refer it to Divine
inspiration. The officers asked if they received St. Leo's
Tome; they answered that they had subscribed it, but
that they would not introduce its contents into their
3 Ibid. 20.
SECT. 111.] THE FIFTH AXD SIXTH CENTURIES. 31 ]
definition of faith. "We are for no other definition/'
they said ; " nothing is wanting in this."
14
Notwithstanding, the Pope's Legates gained their point
through the support of the Emperor Marcian, who had
succeeded Theodosius. A fresh committee was obtained
under the threat that, if they resisted, the Council should
be transferred to the West. Some voices were raised
against this measure ; the cries were repeated against the
Roman party, "They are Nestorians ; let them go to
Rome/"' The Imperial officers remonstrated, "Dioscorus
said, ' Of two natures ;' Leo says, ' Two natures :' which
will you follow, Leo or Dioscorus?" On their answering
" Leo," they continued, " Well then, add to the definition,
according to the judgment of our most holy Leo."
Nothing more was to be said. The committee immediately
proceeded to their work, and in a short time returned to
the assembly with such a definition as the Pope required.
After reciting the Creed of Nicsea and Constantinople, it
observes, " This Creed were sufficient for the perfect know-
ledge of religion, but the enemies of the truth have
invented novel expressions ;" and therefore it proceeds to
state the faith more explicitly. When this was read
through, the Bishops all exclaimed, " This is the faith of
the Fathers ; we all follow it." And thus ended the con-
troversy once for all.
The Council, after ^its termination, addressed a letter to
St. Leo ; in it the Fathers acknowledge him as " con-
stituted interpreter of the voice of Blessed Peter,"4 (with
an allusion to St. Peter's Confession in Matthew xvi.,) and
speak of him as " the very one commissioned with the
guardianship of the Yine by the Saviour."
« Cone. Hard. t. 2, p. 656.
312 THE CHURCH OF [cH. VI.
15.
Such is the external aspect of those proceedings by
which the Catholic faith has been established in Christen-
dom "against the Monophysites. That the definition
passed at Chalcedon is the Apostolic Truth once de-
livered to the Saints is most firmly to be received, from
faith in that overruling Providence which is by special
promise extended over the acts of the Church ; moreover,
that it is in simple accordance with the faith of St.
Athanasius, St. Gregory ISTazianzen, and all the other
Fathers, will be evident to the theological student in pro-
portion as he becomes familiar with their works : but the
historical account of the Council is this, that a formula
which the Creed did not contain, which the Fathers did
not unanimously witness, and which some eminent Saints
had almost in set terms opposed, which the whole East
refused as a symbol, not once, but twice, patriarch by
patriarch, metropolitan by metropolitan, first by the mouth
of above a hundred, then by the mouth of above six hun-
dred of its Bishops, and refused upon the grounds of its
being an addition to the Creed, was forced upon the Coun-
cil, not indeed as being such an addition, yet, on the other
hand, not for subscription merely, but for acceptance as
a definition of faith under the sanction of an anathema, —
forced on the Council by the resolution of the Pope of the
day, acting through his Legates and supported by the civil
power.5
16.
It cannot be supposed that such a transaction would
approve itself to the Churches of Egypt, and the event
showed it : they disowned the authority of the Council,
* [Can any so grave an ex parte charge as this be urged against the
recent Vatican Council ? J"
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 313
and called its adherents Chalcedonians,6 and Synodites.7
Here was the West tyrannizing over the East, forcing it
into agreement with itself, resolved to have one and one
only form of words, rejecting the definition of faith which
the East had drawn up in Council, bidding it and making-
it frame another, dealing peremptorily and sternly with
the assembled Bishops, and casting contempt on the most
sacred traditions of Egypt ! What was Eutyches to them ?
He might be guilty or innocent ; they gave him up :
Dioscorus had given him up at Chalcedon ; 8 they did not
agree with him : 9 he was an extreme man ; they would
not call themselves by human titles ; they were not Euty-
chians ; Eutyches was not their master, but Athanasius
and Cyril were their doctors.1 The two great lights of
their Church, the two greatest and most successful
polemical Fathers that Christianity had seen, had both
pronounced "One Nature Incarnate/'' though allowing
Two before the Incarnation; and though Leo and his
Council had not gone so far as to deny this phrase, they
had proceeded to say what was the contrary to it, to ex-
plain away, to overlay the truth, by defining that the
Incarnate Saviour wafe " in Two Natures." At Ephesus it
had been declared that the Creed should not be touched ;
the Chalcedonian Fathers had, not literally, but virtually
added to it: by subscribing Leo's Tome, and promulgating
their definition of faith, they had added what might be
called, " The Creed of Pope Leo."
17.
It is remarkable, as has been just stated, that Dioscorus,
6 I cannot find my reference for this fact ; the sketch is formed from
notes made some years since, though I have now verified them.
" Leont. de Sect. v. p. 512.
s Concil. Hard. t. 2, p. 99, vid. also p. 418.
9 Renaud. Patr. Alex. p. 115.
i Assein. B. 0. t. 2, pp. 133—137.
314 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
wicked man as lie was in act, was of the moderate or middle
school in doctrine, as the violent and able Severus after
him ; and from the first the great body of the protesting
party disowned Eutyches, whose form of the heresy took
refuge in Armenia, where it remains to this day. The
Armenians alone were pure Eutychians, and so zealously
such that they innovated on the ancient and recognized
custom of mixing water with the wine in the Holy
Eucharist, and consecrated the wine by itself in token of
the one nature, as they considered, of the Christ. Else-
where both name and doctrine of Eutyches were abjured ;
the heretical bodies in Egypt and Syria took a title from
their special tenet, and formed the Monophysite com-
munion. Their theology was at once simple and specious.
They based it upon the illustration which is familiar to us
in the Athanasian Creed, aud which had been used by St.
Gregory Nazianzen, St. Cyril, St. Augustine, Yincent of
Lerins, not to say St. Leo himself. They argued that as
body and soul made up one man, so God and man made
up but one, though one compound Nature, in Christ. It
might have been charitably hoped that their difference
from the Catholics had been a simple matter of words, as
it is allowed by Yigilius of Thapsus really to have been in
many cases ; but their refusal to obey the voice of the
Church was a token of real error in their faith, and their
implicit heterodoxy is proved by their connexion, in spite
of themselves, with the extreme or ultra party whom they
so vehemently disowned.
It is very observable that, ingenious as is their theory
and sometimes perplexing to a disputant, the Monophy-
sites never could shake themselves free of the Eutychians ;
and though they could draw intelligible lines on paper
between the two doctrines, yet in fact by a hidden fatality
their partisans were ever running into or forming alliance
with the anathematized extreme. Thus Peter the Fuller,
SECT. ITT.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 315
the Theopaschite (Eutychian), is at one time in alliance
with Peter the Stammerer, who advocated the Henoticon
(which was Monophysite). The Acephali, though sepa-
rating from the latter Peter for that advocacy, and accused
by Leontius of being Gaianites 2 (Eutychians), are con-
sidered by Facundus as Monophysites.3 Timothy the Cat,
who is said to have agreed with Dioscorus and Peter the
Stammerer, who signed the Henoticon, that is, with two
Monophysite Patriarchs, is said nevertheless, according to
Anastasius, to have maintained the extreme tenet, that
" the Divinity is the sole nature of Christ/'' 4 Severus,
according to Anastasius,4 symbolized with the Phanta-
siasts (Eutychians), yet he is more truly, according to
Leontius, the chief doctor and leader of the Monophysites.
And at one time there was an union, though temporary,
between the Theodosians (Monophysites) and the Gaian-
ites.
18.
Such a division of an heretical party, into the main-
tainers, of an extreme and a moderate view, perspicuous
and plausible on paper, yet in fact unreal, impracticable,
and hopeless, was no new phenomenon in the history of
the Church. As Eutyches put forward an extravagant
tenet, which was first corrected into the Monophysite, and
then relapsed recklessly into the doctrine of the Phan-
tasiasts and the Theopaschites, so had Arius been super-
seded by the Eusebians and had revived in Eunomius ; and
as the moderate Eusebians had formed the great body of the
dissentients from the Nicene Council, so did the Monophy-
sites include the mass of those who protested against Chal-
cedon ; and as the Eusebians had been moderate in creed,
yet unscrupulous in act, so were the Monophysites. And
2 Leont. de Sect. vii. pp. 521, 2. 3 Fac. i. 5. circ. init.
4 Hodeg. 20, p. 319.
316 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
as the Eusebians were ever running individually into pure
Arianism, so did the Monophysites run into pure Euty-
chianism. And as the Monophysites set themselves
against Pope Leo, so had the Eusebians, with even less
provocation, withstood and complained of Pope Julius.
In like manner, the Apollinarians had divided into two
sects ; one, with Timotheus, going the whole length of
the inferences which the tenet of their master involved,
and the more cautious or timid party making an unintel-
ligible stand with Yalentinus. Again, in the history of
Nestorianism, though it admitted less opportunity for
division of opinion, the See of Rome was with St. Cyril in
one extreme, Nestorius in the other, and between them
the great Eastern party, headed by John of Antioch and
Theodoret, not heretical, but for a time dissatisfied with
the Council of Ephesus.
19.
The Nestorian heresy, I have said, gave less opportunity
for doctrinal varieties than the heresy of Eutyches. Its
spirit was rationalizing, and had the qualities which go
with rationalism. When cast out of the Roman Empire,
it addressed itself, as we have seen, to a new and rich
field of exertion, got possession of an Established Church,
co-operated with the civil government, adopted secular
fashions, and, by whatever means, pushed itself out into
an Empire. Apparently, though it requires a very inti-
mate knowledge of its history to speak, except con-
jecturally, it was a political power rather than a dogma,
and despised the science of theology. Eutychianism, on
the other hand, was mystical, severe, enthusiastic ; with
the exception of Severus, and one or two more, it was
supported by little polemical skill ; it had little hold upon
the intellectual Greeks of Syria and Asia Minor, but flou-
rished in Egypt, which was far behind the East in civiliza-
SECT. Til.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 317
tion, and among the native Syrians. Nestorianism, like
Arianism 6 before it, was a cold religion, and more fitted
for the schools than for the many ; but the Monophysites
carried the people with them. Like modern Jansenism,
and unlike Nestorianism, the Monophysites were famous
for their austerities. They have, or had, five Lents in
the year, during which laity as well as clergy abstain not
only from flesh and eggs, but from wine, oil, and fish.6
Monachism was a characteristic part of their ecclesiastical
system : their Bishops, and Maphrian or Patriarch, were
always taken from the Monks, who are even said to have
worn an iron shirt or breastplate as a part of their monas-
tic habit.7
20.
Severus, Patriarch of Antioch at the end of the fifth
century, has already been mentioned as an exception to
the general character of the Monophysites, and, by his
learning and ability, may be accounted the founder of its
theology. Their cause, however, had been undertaken by
the Emperors themselves before him. For the first thirty
years after the Council of Chalcedon, the protesting
Church of Egypt had been the scene of continued tumult
and bloodshed. Dioscorus had been popular with the
people for his munificence, in spite of the extreme laxity
of his morals, and for a while the Imperial Government
failed in obtaining the election of a Catholic successor.
At length Proterius, a man of fair character, and the
Yicar-general of Dioscorus on his absence at Chalcedon,
was chosen, consecrated, and enthroned ; but the people
rose against the civil authorities, and the military, coming
6 i. e. Arianism in the East : " Sanctiores aures plebis quain corda sunt
sacerdotum." S. Hil. contr. Auxent. 6. It requires some research to account
for its hold on the barbarians. Vid. supr. pp. 274, 5.
6 Gibbon, ch. 47. ' Assera. B. 0. t. 2, de Monoph. circ. fin.
318 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
to their defence, were attacked with stones, and pursued
into a church, where they were burned alive by the mob.
Next, the popular leaders prepared to intercept the sup-
plies of grain which were destined for Constantinople ;
and, a defensive retaliation taking place, Alexandria was
starved. Then a force of two thousand men was sent
for the restoration of order, who permitted themselves in
scandalous excesses towards the women of Alexandria.
Proterius's life was attempted, and he was obliged to be
attended by a guard. The Bishops of Egypt would not
submit to him ; two of his own clergy, who afterwards suc-
ceeded him, Timothy and Peter, seceded, and were joined by
four or five of the Bishops and by the mass of 'the popu
lation ;8 and the Catholic Patriarch was left without a
communion in Alexandria. He held a council, and con-
demned the schismatics ; and the Emperor, seconding his
efforts, sent them out of the country, and enforced the
laws against the Eutychians. An external quiet suc-
ceeded ; then Marcian died ; and then forthwith Timothy
(the Cat) made his appearance again/first inEgypt, then in
Alexandria. The people rose in his favour, and carried in
triumph their persecuted champion to the great Caesa-
rean Church, where he was consecrated Patriarch by two
deprived Bishops, who had been put out of their sees,
whether by a Council of Egypt or of Palestine.9 Timo-
thy, now raised to the Episcopal rank, began to create a
new succession ; he ordained Bishops for the Churches
of Egypt, and drove into exile those who were in posses-
sion. The Imperial troops, who had been stationed in
Upper Egypt, returned to Alexandria ; the mob rose again,
broke into the Church, where St. Proterius was in prayer,
and murdered him. A general ejectment of the Catholic
clergy throughout Egypt followed. On their betaking
themselves to Constantinople to the new Emperor,
s Leont. Sect. v. init. 9 Tillemoiit, t. 15, p. 78 1.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 319
Timothy and his party addressed him also. They quoted
the Fathers, and demanded the abrogation of the Council
of Chalcedon. Next they demanded a conference ; the
Catholics said that what was once done could not be un-
done ; their opponents agreed to this and urged it, as their
very argument against Chalcedon, that it added to the
faith, and reversed former decisions.1 After a rule of
three years, Timothy was driven out and Catholicism
restored ; but then in turn the Monophysites rallied, and
this state of warfare and alternate success continued for
thirty years.
21.
At length the Imperial Government, wearied out with
a dispute which was interminable, came to the conclusion
that the only way of restoring peace to the Church was to
abandon the Council of Chalcedon. In the year 482 was
published the famous Henoticon or Pacification of Zeno, in
which the Emperor took upon himself to determine a matter
of faith. The Henoticon declared that no symbol of faith
but that of the Mcene Creed, commonly so called, should
be received in the Churches ; it anathematized the opposite
heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches, and it was silent on
the question of the " One " or " Two Natures " after the
Incarnation. This middle measure had the various effects
which might be anticipated. It united the great body of
the Eastern Bishops, who readily relaxed into the vague
profession of doctrine from which they had been roused by
the authority of St. Leo. All the Eastern Bishops signed
this Imperial formulary. But this unanimity of the East
was purchased by a breach with the West ; for the Popes
cut off the communication between Greeks and Latins for
thirty-five years. On the other hand, the more zealous
Monophysites, disgusted at their leaders for accepting what
they considered an unjustifiable compromise, split off from
i Tillemont, Mem. t. 15, pp. 790—811.
320 THE CHURCH OF [CH. VI.
the Eastern Churches, and formed a sect by themselves,
which remained without Bishops (acephali) for three
hundred years, when at length they were received back
into the communion of the Catholic Church.
22.
Dreary and waste was the condition of the Church, and
forlorn her prospects, at the period which we have been
reviewing. After the brief triumph which attended the
conversion of Constantine, trouble and trial had returned
upon her. Her imperial protectors were failing in power
or in faith. Strange forms of evil were rising in the
distance and were thronging for the conflict. There was
but one spot in the whole of Christendom, one voice in the
whole Episcopate, to which the faithful turned in hope in
that miserable day. In the year 493, in the Pontificate of
Gelasius, the whole of the East was in the hands of
traitors to Chalcedon, and the whole of the West under
the tyranny of the open enemies of Mcaea. Italy was the
prey of robbers; mercenary bands had overrun its territory,
and barbarians were seizing on its farms and settling in
its villas. The peasants were thinned by famine and
pestilence ; Tuscany might be even said, as Gelasius words
it, to contain scarcely a single inhabitant.2 Odoacer was
sinking before Theodoric, and the Pope was changing one
Arian master for another. And as if one heresy were not
enough, Pelagianism was spreading with the connivance
of the Bishops in the territory of Picenum. In the North
of the dismembered Empire, the Britons had first been
infected by Pelagianism, and now were dispossessed by the
heathen Saxons. The Armoricans still preserved a
witness of Catholicism in the West of Gaul ; but Picardy,
Champagne, and the neighbouring provinces, where some
remnant of its supremacy had been found, had lately
« Gibbon, Hist. ch. 36, fin.
SECT. III.] THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. 321
submitted to the yet heathen Clovis. The Arian kingdoms
of Burgundy in France, and of the Visigoths in Aquitaine
and Spain, oppressed a zealous and Catholic clergy. Africa
was in still more deplorable condition under the cruel sway
of the Vandal Gundamond : the people indeed uncorrupted
by the heresy,3 but their clergy in exile and their worship
suspended. While such was the state of the Latins, what
had happened in the East ? Acacius, the Patriarch of Con-
stantinople, had secretly taken part against the Council of
Chalcedon and was under Papal excommunication. Nearly
the whole East had sided with Acacius, and a schism had
begun between East and West, which lasted, as I have
above stated, for thirty-five years. The Henoticon was
in force, and at the Imperial command had been signed by
all the Patriarchs and Bishops throughout the Eastern
Empire.4 In Armenia the Churches were ripening for the
pure Eutychianism which they adopted in the following
century ; and in Egypt the Acephali had already broken
off from the Monophysite Patriarch, were extending in the
east and west of the country, and preferred the loss of the
Episcopal Succession to the reception of the Council of
Chalcedon. And while Monophysites or their favourers
occupied the Churches of the Eastern Empire, Nestorianism
was making progress in the territories beyond it. Barsu-
mas had filled the See of Nisibis, Theodore was read in
the schools of Persia, and the successive Catholici of
Seleucia had abolished Monachism and were secularizing
the clergy.
23.
If then there is now a form of Christianity such, that
it extends throughout the world, though with varying
measures of prominence or prosperity in separate places; —
that it lies under the power of sovereigns and magistrates,
in various ways alien to its faith; — that flourishing nations
3 Gibbon, Hist. ch. 36, fin. 4 Gibbon, Hist. ch. 47.
322 CHURCH OF FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. [CH. VI.
and great empires, professing or tolerating the Christian
name, lie over against it as antagonists ; — that schools of
philosophy and learning are supporting theories, and
following out conclusions, hostile to it, and establishing an
exegetical system subversive of its Scriptures ; — that it has
lost whole Churches by schism, and is now opposed by
powerful communions once part of itself ; — that it has been
altogether or almost driven from some countries ; — that in
others its line of teachers is overlaid, its flocks oppressed,
its Churches occupied, its property held by what may be
called a duplicate succession; — that in others its members
are degenerate and corrupt, and are surpassed in conscien-
tiousness and in virtue, as in gifts of intellect, by the very
heretics whom it condemns ; — that heresies are rife and
bishops negligent within its own pale ; — and that amid
its disorders and fears there is but one Voice for whose
decisions its people wait with trust, one Name and one See
to which they look with hope, and that name Peter, and
that see Rome ; — such a religion is not unlike the Chris-
tianity of the fifth and sixth Centuries.5
5 [The above sketch has run to great length, yet it is only part of what
might be set down in evidence of the wonderful identity of type which
characterizes the Catholic Church from first to last. I have confined myself
for the most part to her political aspect; but a parallel illustration
might be drawn simply from her doctrinal, or from her religious. As to
her religious aspect, Cardinal Wiseman has shown its identity in the fifth
compared with the nineteenth century, in an article of the Dublin Review,
quoted in part in Via Media, vol. ii. p. 378. Indeed it is confessed
on all hands, as by Middleton, Gibbon, &c., that from the time of Constan-
tine to their own, the system and the phenomena of worship in Christendom,
from Moscow to Spain, and from Ireland to Chili, is one and the same.
I have myself paralleled Medieval Europe with modern Belgium or Italy,
in point of ethical character in " Difficulties of Anglicans," vol. i. Lecture ix.,
referring the identity to the operation of a principle, insisted on presently,
the Supremacy of Faith. And so again, as to the system of Catholic doctrine,
the type of the Religion remains the same, because it has developed
according to the " analogy of faith," as is observed in Apol., p. 196, " The
idea of the Blessed Virgin was, as it were, magnified in the Church of
Rome, as time went on, but so were all the Christian ideas, as that of the
Blessed Eucharist," &c.]
CHAPTER VII.
APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE OF A TRUE
DEVELOPMENT.
CONTINUITY OF PRINCIPLES.
IT appears then that there has been a certain general type
of Christianity in every age, by which it is known at first
sight, differing from itself only as what is young differs
from what is mature, or as found in Europe or in America,
so that it is named at once and without hesitation, as forms
of nature are by experts in physical science ; or as some
work of literature or art is at once assigned to its right
author by the critic, difficult as maybe the analysis of that
specific impression by which he is enabled to do so. And
it appears that this type has 'remained entire from first to
last, in spite of that process of development which seems
to be attributed by all parties, for good or bad, to the
doctrines, rites, and usages in which Christianity consists ;
or, in other words, that the changes which have taken
place in Christianity have not been such as to destroy that
type, — that is, that they are not corruptions, because they
are consistent with that type. Here then, in the preser-
vation of type, we have a first Note of the fidelity of the
existing developments of Christianity. Let us now proceed
to a second.
§ 1. The Principles of Christianity.
When developments in Christianity are spoken of, it is
Y 2
324 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
sometimes supposed that they are deductions and diversions
made at random, according to accident or the caprice of
individuals ; whereas it is because they have been conducted
all along on definite and continuous principles that the type
of the Religion has remained from first to last unalterable.
What then are the principles under which the developments
have been made ? I will enumerate some obvious ones.
2.
They must be many and positive, as well as obvious, if
^hey are to be effective ; thus the Society of Friends seems
in the course of years to have changed its type in con-
sequence of its scarcity of principles, a fanatical spiri-
tualism and an intense secularity, types simply contrary
to each other, being alike consistent with its main
principle, " Forms of worship are Antichristian." Chris-
tianity, on the other hand, has principles so distinctive,
numerous, various, and operative, as to be unlike any
other religious, ethical, or political system that the world
has ever seen, unlike, not only in character, but in
persistence in that character. I cannot attempt here to
enumerate more than a few by way of illustration.
3.
For the convenience of arrangement, I will consider the
Incarnation the central truth of the gospel, and the source
whence we are to draw out its principles. This great
doctrine is unequivocally announced in numberless passages
of the New Testament, especially by St. John and St. Paul ;
as is familiar to us all : " The Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." "That which
was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and
our hands have handled, of the Word of life, that declare
we to you." " For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus
SECT. !.§!.] THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY. 325
Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes
He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be
rich." " Not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which
I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of
God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
4.
In such passages as these we have
1. The principle of dogma, that is, supernatural truths
irrevocably committed to human language, imperfect
because it is human, but definitive and necessary because
given from above.
2. The principle of faith, which is the correlative of
dogma, being the absolute acceptance of the divine Word
with an internal assent, in opposition to the informations,
if such, of sight and reason.
3. Faith, being an act of the intellect, opens a way for
inquiry, comparison and inference, that is, for science in
religion, in subservience to itself; this is the principle of
theology.
4. The doctrine of the Incarnation is the announcement
of a divine gift conveyed in a material and visible medium,
it being thus that heaven and earth are in the Incarnation
united. That is, it establishes in the very idea of Chris-
tianity the sacramental principle as its characteristic.
5. Another principle involved in the doctrine of the
Incarnation, viewed as taught or as dogmatic, is the
necessary use of language in a second or mystical sense.
Words must be made to express new ideas, and are
invested with a sacramental office.
6. It is our Lord's intention in His Incarnation to make
us what He is Himself; this is the principle of grace,
which is not only holy but sanctifying.
7. It cannot elevate and change us without mortifying
our lower nature : — here is the principle of asceticism.
326 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [cH. VII.
8. And, involved in this death of the natural man,
is necessarily a revelation of the malignity of sin, in
corroboration of the forebodings of conscience.
9. Also by the fact of an Incarnation we are taught
that matter is an essential part of us, and, as well as mind,
iscapable of sanctification.
5.
Here are nine specimens of Christian principles out of
the many1 which might be enumerated, and will any one say
that they have not been retained in vigorous action in the
Church at all times amid whatever development of doc-
trine Christianity has experienced, so as even to be the
very instruments of that development, and as patent, and
as operative, in the Latin and Greek Christianity of this
day as they were in the beginning ?
This continuous identity of principles in ecclesiastical
action has been seen in part in treating of the Note of
Unity of type, and will be seen also in the Notes which
follow ; however, as some direct account of them, in illus-
tration, may be desirable, I will single out four as speci-
mens,— Faith, Theology, Scripture, and Dogma.
§ 2. Supremacy of Faith.
This principle which, as we have already seen, was so
great a jest to Celsus and Julian, is of the following kind : —
1 [Development itself is such a principle also. " And thus I was led on
to a further consideration. I saw that the principle of development not
only accounted for certain facts, but was in itself a remarkable philosophical
phenomenon, giving a character to the whole course of Christian thought.
It was discernible from the first years of Catholic teaching up to the present
day, and gave to that teaching a unity and individuality. It served as a
sort of test, which the Anglican could not stand, that modern Rome was in
truth ancient Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople, just as a mathematical
curve has its own law and expression." Apol. p. 198, vid. also Angl. Diff.
vol. i. Lect. xii. 7.]
SECT. I. § 2.] THE SUPREMACY OF FAITH. 327
That belief in Christianity is in itself better than unbelief ;
that faith, though an intellectual action, is ethical in its
origin ; that it is safer to believe ; that we must begin with
believing; that as for the reasons of believing, they are for
the most part implicit, and need be but slightly recognized
by the mind that is under their influence ; that they con-
sist moreover rather of presumptions and ventures after
the truth than of accurate and complete proofs ; and that
probable arguments, under the scrutiny and sanction of
a prudent judgment, are sufficient for conclusions which
we even embrace as most certain, and turn to the most
important uses.
2.
Antagonistic to this is the principle that doctrines are
only so far to be considered true as they are logically de-
monstrated. This is the assertion of Locke, who says in
defence of it, — " Whatever God hath revealed is certainly
true ; no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object
of Faith ; but, whether it be a divine revelation or no,
reason must judge." Now, if he merely means that proofs
can be given for Revelation, and that Reason comes in
logical order before Faith, such a doctrine is in no sense
uncatholic ; but he certainly holds that for an individual
to act on Faith without proof, or to make Faith a personal
principle of conduct for themselves, without waiting till
they have got their reasons accurately drawn out and ser-
viceable for controversy, is enthusiastic and absurd.
" How a man may know whether he be [a lover of truth
for truth's sake] is worth inquiry ; and I think there is
this one unerring mark of it, viz. the not entertaining any
proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built
upon, will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of
assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it ;
loves not truth for truth's sake, but for some other by-
end."
328 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [cH. VII.
3.
It does not seem to have struck him that our " by-end "
may be the desire to please our Maker, and that the de-
fect of scientific proof may be made up to our reason by
our love of Him. It does not seem to have struck him that
such a philosophy as his cut off from the possibility and
the privilege of faith all but the educated few, all but the
learned, the clear-headed, the men of practised intellects
and balanced minds, men who had leisure, who had oppor-
tunities of consulting others, and kind and wise friends
to whom they deferred. How could a religion ever be
Catholic, if it was to be called credulity or enthusiasm in
the multitude to use those ready instruments of belief,
which alone Providence had put into their power ? On
such philosophy as this, were it generally received, no
great work ever would have been done for God's glory
and the welfare of man. The " enthusiasm " against
which Locke writes may do much harm, and act at times
absurdly ; but calculation never made a hero. However,
it is not to our present purpose to examine this theory,
and I have done so elsewhere.2 Here I have but to show
the unanimity of Catholics, ancient and modern, in their
absolute rejection of it.
4.
For instance, it is the very objection urged by Celsus,
that Christians were but parallel to the credulous victims
of jugglers or of devotees, who itinerated through the
pagan population. He says " that some do not even wish
to give or to receive a reason for their faith, but say, ' Do
not inquire but believe/ and ' Thy faith will save thee ;'
and ' A bad thing is the world's wisdom, and foolishness
is a good/ ' How does Origen answer the charge ? by
2 University Sermons [but, more carefully in the " Essay on Assent "].
SECT. I. § 2.] THE SUPREMACY OF FAITH. 329
denying the fact, and speaking of the reason of each
individual as demonstrating the divinity of the Scriptures,
and Faith as coming after that argumentative process, as
it is now popular to maintain ? Far from it ; he grants
the fact alleged against the Church and defends it. He
observes that, considering the engagements and the neces-
sary ignorance of the multitude of men, it is a very
happy circumstance that a substitute is provided for those
philosophical exercises, which Christianity allows and
encourages, but does not impose on the individual.
" Which/' he asks, " is the better, for them to believe
without reason, and thus to reform any how and gain a
benefit, from their belief in the punishment of sinners and
the reward of well-doers, or to refuse to be converted on
mere belief, or except they devote themselves to an in-
tellectual inquiry ? " 3 Such a provision then is a mark
of divine wisdom and mercy. In like manner, St. Ire-
naeus, after observing that the Jews had the evidence of
prophecy, which the Gentiles had not, and that to the
latter it was a foreign teaching and a new doctrine to be
told that the gods of the Gentiles were not only not gods,
but were idols of devils, and that in consequence St. Paul
laboured more upon them, as needing it more, adds, " On
the other hand, the faith of the Gentiles is thereby shown
to be more generous, who followed the word of God with-
out the assistance of Scriptures." To believe on less
evidence was generous faith, not enthusiasm. And so
again, Eusebius, while he contends of course that Chris-
tians are influenced by " no irrational faith," that is, by
a faith which is capable of a logical basis, fully allows
that in the individual believing, it is not necessarily or
ordinarily based upon argument, and maintains that it is
connected with that very " hope," and inclusively with
that desire of the things beloved, which Locke in the above
3 c. Cels. i. 9.
330 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
extract considers incompatible with the love of truth.
" What do we find," he says, " but that the whole life of
man is suspended on these two, hope and faith ? " 4
I do not mean of course that the Fathers were opposed
to inquiries into the intellectual basis of Christianity, but
that they held that men were not obliged to wait for logical
proof before believing ; on the contrary, that the majority
were to believe first on presumptions and let the intellectual
proof come as their reward.5
5.
St. Augustine, who had tried both ways, strikingly
contrasts them in his De Utilitate credendi, though his
direct object in that work is to decide, not between Reason
and Faith, but between Reason and Authority. He
addresses in it a very dear friend, who, like himself, had
become a Manichee, but who, with less happiness than his
own, was still retained in the heresy. " The Manichees,"
he observes, " inveigh against those who, following the
authority of the Catholic faith, fortify themselves in the
first instance with believing, and before they are able to
set eyes upon that truth, which is discerned by the pure
soul, prepare themselves for a God who shall illuminate.
You, Honoratus, know that nothing else was the cause of
my falling into their hands, than their professing to put
away Authority which was so terrible, and by absolute and
simple Reason to lead their hearers to God's presence, and
to rid them of all error. For what was there else that
forced me, for nearly nine years, to slight the religion which
was sown in me when a child by my parents, and to follow
them and diligently attend their lectures, but* their asser-
tion that I was terrified by superstition, and was bidden
4 Hser. iv. 24. Euseb. Praep. Ev. i. 5.
5 [This is too large a subject to admit of justice being done to it here :
I have treated of it at length in the <f Essay on Assent."]
SECT. 1. § 2.] THE SUPREMACY OF FAITH. 331
to have Faith before I had Eeason, whereas they pressed
no one to believe before the truth had been discussed and
unravelled ? Who would not be seduced by these promises,
and especially a youth, such as they found me then, de-
sirous of truth, nay conceited and forward, by reason of the
disputations of certain men of school learning, with a con-
tempt of old- wives' tales, and a desire of possessing and
drinking that clear and unmixed truth which they pro-
mised me ? " 6
Presently he goes on to describe how he was reclaimed.
He found the Manichees more successful in pulling down
than in building up ; he was disappointed in Faustus,
whom he found eloquent and nothing besides. Upon this,
he did not know what to hold, and was tempted to a
general scepticism. At length he found he must be guided
by Authority ; then came the question, Which authority
among so many teachers ? He cried earnestly to God for
help, and at last was led to the Catholic Church. He
then returns to the question urged against that Church,
that " she bids those who come to her believe," whereas
heretics " boast that they do not impose a yoke of be-
lieving, but open a fountain of teaching." On which he
observes,, "True religion cannot in any manner be rightly
embraced, without a belief in those things which each in-
dividual afterwards attains and perceives, if he behave
himself well and shall deserve it, nor altogether without
some weighty and imperative Authority." 7
6.
These are specimens of the teaching of the Ancient
Church on the subject of Faith and Eeason ; if, on the
other hand, we would know what has been taught on the
subject in those modern schools, in and through which
the subsequent developments of Catholic doctrines have
6 Init. 7 Vid. also supr. p. 256.
332 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
proceeded, we may turn to the extracts made from their
writings by Huet, in his " Essay on the Human Under-
standing ;" and, in so doing, we need not perplex ourselves
with the particular theory, true or not, for the sake of
which he has collected them. Speaking of the weakness of
the Understanding, Huet says, —
" God, by His goodness, repairs this defect of human
nature, by granting us the inestimable gift of Faith,
which confirms our staggering Reason, and corrects that
perplexity of doubts which we must bring to the know-
ledge of things. For example : my reason not being
able to inform me with absolute evidence, and perfect
certainty, whether there are bodies, what was the origin
of the world, and many other like things, after I had
received the Faith, all those doubts vanish, as darkness at
the rising of the sun. This made St. Thomas Aquinas
say : ' It is necessary for man to receive as articles of
Faith, not only the things which are above Reason, but
even those that for their certainty may be known by
Reason. For human Reason is very deficient in things
divine ; a sign of which we have from philosophers, who,
in the search of human things by natural methods, have
been deceived, and opposed each other on many heads.
To the end then that men may have a certain and un-
doubted cognizance of God, it was necessary things divine
should be taught them by way of Faith, as being revealed
of God Himself, who cannot lie.' 8
" Then St. Thomas adds afterwards : ' No search by
natural Reason is sufficient to make man know things
divine, nor even those which we can prove by Reason/
And in another place he speaks thus: ' Things which may
be proved demonstratively, as the Being of God, the Unity
of the Godhead, and other points, are placed among articles
we are to believe, because previous to other things that
8 pp. 142, 143, Combe's tr.
SECT. I. § 2.] THE SUPREMACY OF FAITH. 333
are of Faith ; and these must be pre-supposed, at least by
such as have no demonstration of them.
7.
" What St. Thomas says of the cognizance of divine
things extends also to the knowledge of human, according
to the doctrine of Suarez. ' We often correct/ he says,
' the light of Nature by the light of Faith, even in things
which seem to be first principles, as appears in this :
those things that are the same to a third, are the same
between themselves ; which, if we have respect to the
Trinity, ought to be restrained to finite things. And in
other mysteries, especially in those of the Incarnation and
the Eucharist, we use many other limitations, that nothing
may be repugnant to the Faith. This is then an indica-
tion that the light of Faith is most certain, because
founded on the first truth, which is God, to whom it's more
impossible to deceive or be deceived than for the natural
science of man to be mistaken and erroneous/ 9 . . . .
" If we hearken not to Reason, say you, you overthrow
that great foundation of Religion which Reason has
established in our understanding, viz. God is. To answer
this objection, you must be told that men know God in
two manners. By Reason, with entire human certainty ;
and by Faith, with absolute and divine certainty. Al-
though by Reason we cannot acquire any knowledge more
certain than that of the Being of God ; insomuch that all
the arguments, which the impious oppose to this know-
ledge are of no validity and easily refuted ; nevertheless
this certainty is not absolutely perfect.1
8.
" Now although, to prove the existence of the Deity, we
can bring arguments which, accumulated and connected
» pp. 144, 145. * p. 219.
334 ' APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
together, are not of less power to convince men than
geometrical principles, and theorems deduced from them,
and which are of entire human certainty, notwithstand-
ing, because learned philosophers have openly opposed
even these principles, 'tis clear we cannot, neither in the
natural knowledge we have of God, which is acquired by
Reason, nor in science founded on geometrical principles
and theorems, find absolute and consummate certainty,
but only that human certainty I have spoken of, to which
nevertheless every wise man ought to submit his under-
standing. This being not repugnant to the testimony of
the Book of Wisdom and the Epistle to the Romans,
which declares that men who do not from the make of the
world acknowledge the power and divinity of the Maker
are senseless and inexcusable.
" For to use the terms of Yasquez : ' By these words the
Holy Scripture means only that there has ever been
a sufficient testimony of the Being of a God in the fabrick
of the world, and in His other works, to make Him known
unto men : but the Scripture is not under any concern
whether this knowledge be evident or of greatest proba-
bility ; for these terms are seen and understood, in their
common and usual acceptation, to signify all the knowledge
of the mind with a determined assent/ He adds after :
' For if any one should at this time deny Christ, that
which would render him inexcusable would not be because
he might have had an evident knowledge and reason for
believing Him, but because he might have believed it by
Faith and a prudential knowledge/
" 'Tis with reason then that Suarez teaches that ' the
natural evidence of this principle, God is the first truth,
who cannot be deceived, is not necessary, nor sufficient
enough to make us believe by infused Faith, what God
reveals.' He proves, by the testimony of experience, that
it is not necessary ; for ignorant and illiterate Christians,
SECT. I. § 2.] THE SUPREMACY OF FAITH. 335
though they know nothing clearly and certainly of God,
do believe nevertheless that God is. Even Christians of
parts and learning, as St. Thomas has observed, believe
that God is, before they know it by Reason. Suarez
shows afterwards that the natural evidence of this princi-
ple is not sufficient, because divine Faith, which is infused
into our understanding, cannot be bottomed upon human
faith alone, how clear and firm soever it is, as upon a
formal object, because an assent most firm, and of an
order most noble and exalted, cannot derive its certainty
from a more infirm assent.2 .
9.
<c As touching the motives of credibility, which, pre-
paring the mind to receive Faith, ought according to you
to be not only certain by supreme and human certainty, but
by supreme and absolute certainty, I will oppose Gabriel Biel
to you, who pronounces that to receive Faith 'tis sufficient
that the motives of credibility be proposed as probable. Do
you believe that children, illiterate, gross, ignorant people,
who have scarcely the use of Reason, and notwithstanding
have received the gift of Faith, do most clearly and
most steadfastly conceive those forementioned motives of,
credibility ? No, without doubt ; but the grace of God
comes in to their assistance, and sustains the imbecility of
Nature and Reason.
" This is the common opinion of divines. Reason has
need of divine grace, not only in gross, illiterate persons,
but even in those of parts and learning ; for how clear-
sighted soever that may be, yet it cannot make us have
Faith, if celestial light does not illuminate us within,
because, as I have said already, divine Faith being of a
superior order cannot derive its efficacy from human
2 pp. 221, 223.
336 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [cH. VII.
faith.3 "This is likewise the doctrine of St.
Thomas Aquinas : ' The light of Faith makes things seen
that are believed/ He says moreover, * Believers have
knowledge of the things of Faith, not in a demonstrative
way, but so as by the light of Faith it appears to them
that they ought to be believed/ " 4
10.
It is evident what a special influence such doctrine as
this must exert upon the theological method of those who
hold it. Arguments will come to be considered as sug-
gestions and guides rather than logical proofs ; and
developments as the slow, spontaneous, ethical growth,
not the scientific and compulsory results, of existing
opinions.
§ 3. Theology.
I have spoken and have still to speak of the action of
logic, implicit and explicit, as a safeguard, and thereby a
note, of legitimate developments of doctrine : but I am
regarding it here as that continuous tradition and habit
in the Church of a scientific analysis of all revealed truth,
which is an ecclesiastical principle rather than a note of
any kind, as not merety bearing upon the process of
development, but applying to all religious teaching
equally, and which is almost unknown beyond the pale
of Christendom. Heason, thus considered, is subservient
to faith, as handling, examining, explaining, recording,
cataloguing, defending, the truths which faith, not
reason, has gained for us, as providing an intellectual
expression of supernatural facts, eliciting what is implicit,
comparing, measuring, connecting each with each, and
forming one and all into a theological system.
3 pp. 229, 230. « pp. 230, 231.
SECT. I. § 3.] THEOLOGY. 337
2.
The first step in theology is investigation, an investi-
gation arising out of the lively interest and devout welcome
which the matters investigated claim of us ; and, if
Scripture teaches us the duty of faith, it teaches quite as
distinctly that loving inquisitiveness which is the life of
the Schola. It attributes that temper both to the Blessed
Virgin and to the Angels. The Angels are said to have
" desired to look into the mysteries of Kevelation," and it
is twice recorded of Mary that she "kept these things and
pondered them in her heart." Moreover, her words to the
Archangel, "How shall this be?" show that there is a
questioning in matters revealed to us compatible with the
fullest and most absolute faith. It has sometimes been said
in defence and commendation of heretics that "their
misbelief at least showed that they had thought upon the
subject of religion ;" this is an unseemly paradox, — at the
same time there certainly is the opposite extreme of a readi-
ness to receive any number of dogmas at a minute's warning,
which, when it is witnessed, fairly creates a suspicion that
they are merely professed with the tongue, not intelligently
held. Our Lord gives no countenance to such lightness
of mind ; He calls on His disciples to use their reason, and
to submit it. Nathanael's question " Can there any good
thing come out of Nazareth ? " did not prevent our Lord's
praise of him as " an Israelite without guile." Nor did
He blame Nicodemus, except for want of theological
knowledge, on his asking " How can these things be ? "
Even towards St. Thomas He was gentle, as if towards one
of those who had " eyes too tremblingly awake to bear with
dimness for His sake." In like manner He praised the cen-
turion when he argued himself into a confidence of divine
help and relief from the analogy of his own profession ; and
left his captious enemies to prove for themselves from the
338 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
mission of the Baptist His own mission ; and asked them " if
David called Plim Lord, how was He his Son ? " and, when
His disciples wished to have a particular matter taught
them, chid them for their want of " understanding." And
these are but some out of the various instances which He
gives us of the same lesson.
3.
Reason has ever been awake and in exercise in the
Church after Him from the first. Scarcely were the
Apostles withdrawn from the world, when the Martyr
Ignatius, in his way to the Roman Amphitheatre, wrote
his strikingly theological Epistles; he was followed by
Irenseus, Hippoly tus, and Tertullian ; thus we are brought
to the age of Athanasius and his contemporaries, and to
Augustine. Then we pass on by Maximus and John
Damascene to the Middle age, when theology was made still
more scientific by the Schoolmen ; nor has it become less
so, by passing on from St. Thomas to the great Jesuit
writers Suarez and Yasquez, and then to Lambertini.
§ 4. Scripture and its Mystical Interpretation.
Several passages have occurred in the foregoing
Chapters, to suggest the theological principle on which
some words are now to be said. Theodore's exclusive
adoption of the literal, and repudiation of the mystical
interpretation of Holy Scripture, leads to the consideration
of the latter, as one of the characteristic conditions or
principles on which the teaching of the Church has ever
proceeded. Thus Christianity developed, as we have
incidentally seen, into the form, first, of a Catholic, then of
a Papal Church. It was Scripture that was made the rule
on which this development proceeded in each case, and
Scripture moreover interpreted in a mystical sense ; and,
SECT.I.§4] SCRIPTUREAND ITS MYSTICAL INTERPRETATION. 339
whereas at first certain texts were inconsistently confined
to the letter, and a Millennium was in consequence expected,
the very course of events, as time went on, interpreted the
prophecies about the Church more truly, and that first in
respect of her prerogative as occupying the orbis termrum,
next in support of the claims of the See of St. Peter.
This is but one specimen of a certain law of Christian
teaching, which is this, — a reference to Scripture through-
out, and especially iu its mystical sense.5
2.
1. This is a characteristic which will become more and
more evident to us, the more we look for it. The divines
of the Church are in every age engaged in regulating
themselves by Scripture, appealing to Scripture in proof
of their conclusions, and exhorting and teaching in the
thoughts and language of Scripture. Scripture may be
said to be the medium in which the mind of the Church
has energized and developed.6 When St. Methodius would
enforce the doctrine of vows of celibacy, he refers to the
book of Numbers ; and if St. Irenaeus proclaims the
dignity of St. Mary, it is from a comparison of St. Luke's
Gospel with Genesis. And thus St. Cyprian, in his
Testimonies, rests the prerogatives of martyrdom, as
5 So much I allow to Proph. Offic. Lect. xiii. [Via Media, vol. i.]
6 A late writer goes farther, and maintains that it is not determined by
the Council of Trent, whether the whole of the Revelation is in Scripture
or not. Though this position be untenable, at least it is a remarkable
testimony on the part of opponents to the Church's reverence for the written
word. " The Synod declares that the Christian ' truth and discipline are
contained in written books and unwritten traditions.' They were well
aware that the controversy then was, whether the Christian doctrine was
only in part contained in Scripture. But they did not dare to frame their
decree openly in accordance with the modern Romish view ; they did not
venture to affirm, as they might easily have done, that the Christian verity
* was contained partly in written books, and partly in unwritten tradi-
tions/ " — Palmer on the Church, vol. 2, p. 15.
z 2
340 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
indeed the whole circle of Christian doctrine, on the
declaration of certain texts; and, when in his letter to
Antonian he seems to allude to Purgatory, he refers to our
Lord's words about " the prison " and " paying the last
farthing." And if St. Ignatius exhorts to unity, it is from
St. Paul ; and he quotes St. Luke against the Phantasiasts
of his day. We have a first instance of this law in the
Epistle of St. Polycarp, and a last in the practical works
of St. Alphonso Liguori. St. Cyprian, or St. Ambrose, or
St. Bede, or St. Bernard, or St. Carlo, or such popular
books as Horstius's Paradisus A.nimce, are specimens of a
rule which is too obvious to need formal proof. It is
exemplified in the theological decisions of St. Athanasius
in the fourth century, and of St. Thomas in the thirteenth ;
in the structure of the Canon Law, and in the Bulls and
Letters of Popes. It is instanced in the notion so long
prevalent in the Church, which philosophers of this day
do not allow us to forget, that all truth, all science, must
be derived from the inspired volume. And it is recognized
as well as exemplified ; recognized as distinctly by writers
of the Society of Jesus, as it is copiously exemplified by
the Ante-nicene Fathers.
3.
" Scriptures are called canonical," says Salmeron, " as
having been received and set apart by the Church into the
Canon of sacred books, and because they are to us a rule
of right belief and good living ; also because they ought to
rule and moderate all other doctrines, laws, writings,
whether ecclesiastical, apocryphal, or human. For as these
agree with them, or at least do not disagree, so far are
they admitted ; but they are repudiated and reprobated so
far as they differ from them even in the least matter." 7
Again : " The main subject of Scripture is nothing else
7 Opp. t. 1, p. 4.
SECT. I. §4] SCRIPTURE AND ITS MYSTICAL INTERPRETATION. 34 1
than to treat of the God-Man, or the Man-God, Christ
Jesus, not only in the New Testament, which is open, but
in the Old For whereas Scripture contains
nothing but the precepts of belief and conduct, or faith
and works, the end and the means towards it, the Creator
and the creature, love of God and our neighbour, creation
and redemption, and whereas all these are found in Christ,
it follows that Christ is the proper subject of Canonical
Scripture. For all matters of faith, whether concerning
Creator or creatures, are recapitulated in Jesus, whom
every heresy denies, according to that text, ' Every spirit
that divides (solvit] Jesus is not of God ;' for He as man is
united to the Godhead, and as God to the manhood, to
the Father from whom He is born, to the Holy Ghost who
proceeds at once from Christ and the Father, to Mary His
most Holy Mother, to the Church, to Scriptures, Sacra-
ments, Saints, Angels, the Blessed, to Divine Grace, to
the authority and ministers of the Church, so that it is
rightly said that every heresy divides Jesus." 8 And again :
" Holy Scripture is^so fashioned and composed by the Holy
Ghost as to be accommodated to all plans, times, persons,
difficulties, dangers, diseases, the expulsion of evil, the
obtaining of good, the stifling of errors, the establishment
of doctrines, the ingrafting of virtues, the averting of
vices. Hence it is deservedly compared by St. Basil to a
dispensary which supplies various medicines against every
complaint. From it did the Church in the age of Martyrs
draw her firmness and fortitude ; in the age of Doctors,
her wisdom and light 'of knowledge ; in the time of
heretics, the overthrow of error ; in time of prosperity,
humility and moderation; fervour and diligence, in a
lukewarm time ; and in times of depravity and growing
abuse, reformation from corrupt living and return to the
first estate."9
8 Opp. 1. 1. pp. 4, 5. 9 Ibid. p. 9.
342 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
4.
" Holy Scripture," says Cornelius a Lapide, " contains
the beginnings of all theology : for theology is nothing
but the science of conclusions which are drawn from
principles certain to faith, and therefore is of all sciences
most august as well as certain ; but the principles of faith
and faith itself doth Scripture contain ; whence it evidently
follows that Holy Scripture lays down those principles of
theology by which the theologian begets of the mind's
reasoning his demonstrations. He, then, who thinks he
can tear away Scholastic Science from the work of
commenting on Holy Scripture is hoping for offspring
without a mother/'1 Again: "What is the subject-
matter of Scripture ? Must I say it in a word ? Its aim
is de omni scibili ; it embraces in its bosom all studies, all
that can be known : and thus it is a certain university of
sciences containing all sciences either ( formally ' or
' eminently/ " 2
Nor am I aware that later Post-tridentine writers deny
that the whole Catholic faith may be proved from Scrip-
ture, though they would certainly maintain that it is not
to be found on the surface of it, nor in such sense that it
may be gained from Scripture without the aid of Tradition.
5.
2. And this has been the doctrine of all ages of the
Church, as is shown by the disinclination of her teachers
to confine themselves to the mere literal interpretation of
Scripture. Her most subtle and powerful method of proof,
whether in ancient or modern times, is the mystical sense,
which is so frequently used in doctrinal controversy as on
many occasions to supersede any other. Thus the Council
of Trent appeals to the peace-offering spoken of in Malachi
1 Proem. 5. 2 p. 4.
SECT. l.§ 4] SCRIPTURE AND ITS MYSTICAL INTERPRETATION. 343
in proof of the Eucharistic Sacrifice ; to the water and
blood issuing from our Lord's side, and to the mention of
" waters " in the Apocalypse, in admonishing on the
subject of the mixture of water with the wine in the
Oblation. Thus Bellarmine defends Monastic celibacy by
our Lord's words in Matthew xix., and refers to " We
went through fire and water/' &c., in the Psalm, as an
argument for Purgatory ; and these, as is plain, are 'but
specimens of a rule. Now, on turning to primitive con-
troversy,, we find this method of interpretation to be the
very basis of the proof of the Catholic doctrine of the
Holy Trinity. Whether we betake ourselves to the Ante-*
nicene writers or the Nicene, certain texts will meet us,
which do not obviously refer to that doctrine, yet are put
forward as palmary proofs of it. Such are, in respect of our
Lord's divinity, " My heart is inditing of a good matter,"
or " has burst forth with a good Word ;" " The Lord
made " or " possessed Me in the beginning of His ways ;"
" I was with Him, in whom He delighted ;" " In Thy
Light shall we see Light ;" a Who shall declare His
generation ? " " She is the Breath of the Power of God ;"
and " His Eternal Power and Godhead."
On the other hand, the School of Antioch, which adopted
the literal interpretation, was, as I have noticed above, the
very metropolis of heresy. Not to speak of Lucian, whose
history is but imperfectly known, (one of the first masters
of this school, and also teacher of Arius and his principal
supporters), Diodorus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, who
were the most eminent masters of literalism in the succeed-
ing generation, were, as we have seen, the forerunners of
Nestorianism. The case had been the same in a still
earlier age ; — the Jews clung to the literal sense of the
Scriptures and hence rejected the Gospel ; the Christian
Apologists proved its divinity by means of the allegorical.
The formal connexion of this mode of interpretation with
344 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
Christian theology is noticed by Porphyry, who speaks of
Origen and others as borrowing it from heathen philosophy,
both in explanation of the Old Testament and in defence
of their own doctrine. It may be almost laid down as an
historical fact, that the mystical interpretation and ortho-
doxy will stand or fall together.
6.
This is clearly seen, as regards the primitive theology,
by a recent writer, in the course of a Dissertation upon
St. Ephrem. After observing that Theodore of Heraclea,
Eusebius, and Diodorus gave a systematic opposition to the
mystical interpretation, which had a sort of sanction from
Antiquity and the orthodox Church, he proceeds ; "Ephrem
is not as sober in his interpretations, nor could it be, since
he was a zealous disciple of the orthodox faith. For all
those who are most eminent in such sobriety were as far
as possible removed from the faith of the Councils
On the other hand, all who retained the faith of the Church
never entirely dispensed with the spiritual sense of the
Scriptures. For the Councils watched over the orthodox
faith ; nor was it safe in those ages, as we learn especially
from the instance of Theodore of Mopsuestia, to desert the
spiritual for an exclusive cultivation of the literal method.
Moreover, the allegorical interpretation, even when the
literal sense was not injured, was also preserved ; because
in those times, when both heretics and Jews in controversy
were stubborn in their objections to Christian doctrine,
maintaining that the Messiah was yet to come, or denying
the abrogation of the Sabbath and ceremonial law, or
ridiculing the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and
especially that of Christ's Divine Nature, under such
circumstances ecclesiastical writers found it to their
purpose, in answer to such exceptions, violently to refer
SECT. I. §4] SCRIPTURE AND ITS M YSTICALINTERPRETATION. 345
every part of Scripture by allegory to Christ and His
Church." 3
7.
With this passage from a learned German, illustrating
the bearing of the allegorical method upon the Judaic and
Athanasian controversies, it will be well to compare the
following passage from the latitudinarian Hale's " Golden
Remains/' as directed against the theology of Home.
" The literal, plain, and uncontroversable meaning of
Scripture," he says, " without any addition or supply by
way of interpretation, is that alone which for ground of
faith we are necessarily bound to accept ; except it be
there, where the Holy Ghost Himself treads us out another
way. I take not this to be any particular conceit of mine,
but that unto which our Church stands necessarily bound.
When we receded from the Church of Rome, one motive was,
because she added unto Scripture her glosses as Canonical,
to supply what the plain text of Scripture could not yield.
If, in place of hers, we set up our own glosses, thus to do
were nothing else but to pull down Baal, and set up an
Ephod, to run round and meet the Church of Rome again
in the same point in which at first we left her. . . . This
doctrine of the literal sense was never grievous or pre-
judicial to any, but only to those who were inwardly con-
scious that their positions were not sufficiently grounded.
When Cardinal Cajetan, in the days of our grandfathers,
had forsaken that vein of postilling and allegorizing on
Scripture, which for a long time had prevailed in the
Church, and betaken himself unto the literal sense, it was
a thing so distasteful unto the Church of Rome that he
was forced to find out many shifts and make many apo-
logies for himself. The truth is (as it will appear to him
that reads his writings), this sticking close to the literal
3 Lengerke, de Ephr. S. pp. 78—80.
346 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
sense was that alone which made him to shake off many of
those tenets upon which the Church of Rome and the
reformed Churches differ. But when the importunity of
the Reformers, and the great credit of Calvin's writings in
that kind, had forced the divines of Rome to level their
interpretations by the same line ; when they saw that no
pains, no subtlety of wit was strong enough to defeat the
literal evidence of Scripture, it drove them on those
desperate shoals, on which at this day they stick, to call
in question, as far as they durst, the credit of the Hebrew
text, and countenance against it a corrupt translation ;
to add traditions unto Scripture, and to make the Church's
interpretation, so pretended, to be above exception." 4
8.
He presently adds concerning the allegorical sense : "If
we absolutely condemn these interpretations, then must
we condemn a great part of Antiquity, who are very much
conversant in this kind of interpreting. For the most
partial for Antiquity cannot choose but see and confess
thus much, that for the literal sense, the interpreters of
our own times, because of their skill in the original
languages, their care of pressing the circumstances and
coherence of the text, of comparing like places of Scripture
with like, have generally surpassed the best of the
ancients." 5
The use of Scripture then, especially its spiritual or
second sense, as a medium of thought and deduction, is a
characteristic principle of doctrinal teaching in the
Church.
§ 5. Dogma.
1. That opinions in religion are not matters of in-
difference, but have a definite bearing on the position of
4 pp. 24—26. 5 p. 27.
SECT. I. § 5.] DOGMA. 347
their holders in the Divine Sight, is a principle on which
the Evangelical Faith has from the first developed, and on
which that Faith has been the first to develope. I suppose,
it hardly had any exercise under the Law ; the zeal and
obedience of the ancient people being mainly employed in
the maintenance of divine worship and the overthrow of
idolatry, not in the action of the intellect. Faith is in this,
as in other respects, a characteristic of the Gospel, except
so far as it was anticipated, as its time drew near. Elijah
and the Prophets down to Ezra resisted Baal or restored
the Temple Service ; the Three Children refused to bow
down before the golden image ; Daniel would turn his face
towards Jerusalem ; the Maccabees spurned the Grecian
paganism. On the other hand, the Greek Philosophers
were authoritative indeed in their teaching, used the
" Ipse dixit," aod demanded the faith of their disciples ;
but they did not commonly attach sanctity or reality to
opinions, or view them in a religious light. Our Saviour
was the first to "bear witness to the Truth," and to die
for it, when " before Pontius Pilate he witnessed a good
confession." St. John and St. Paul,, following his example,
both pronounce anathema on those who denied " the
Truth " or " brought in another Gospel." Tradition tells
us that the Apostle of love seconded his word with his
deed, and on one occasion hastily quitted a bath because
an heresiarch of the day had entered it. St. Ignatius, his
contemporary, compares false teachers to raging dogs ;
and St. Polycarp, his disciple, exercised the same severity
upon Marcion which 'St. John had shown towards Ce-
rinthus.
2.
St. Irenseus exemplifies the same doctrine after St.
Polycarp : "Isaw thee," he says to the heretic Florinus,
" when I was yet a boy, in lower Asia, with Polycarp,
348 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
when thou wast living splendidly in the Imperial Court,
and trying to recommend thyself to him. I remember
indeed what then happened better than more recent occur-
rences, for the lessons of boyhood grow with the mind and
become one with it. Thus I can name the place where
blessed Polycarp sat and conversed, and his goings out
and comings in, and the fashion of his life, and the
appearance of his person, and his discourses to the people,
and his familiarity with John, which he used to tell of,
and with the rest who had seen the Lord, and how he used
to repeat their words, and what it was that he had learned
about the Lord from them. . . . And in the sight of God,
I can protest, that, if that blessed and apostolical Elder
had heard aught of this doctrine, he had cried out and
stopped his ears, saying after his wont, * 0 Good God, for
what times hast thou reserved me that I should endure
this ? ' and he had fled the place where he was sitting or
standing when he heard it/' It seems to have been the
duty of every individual Christian from the first to witness
in his place against all opinions which were contrary to
what he had received in his baptismal catechizing, and to
shun the society of those who maintained them. " So
religious/' says Irenseus after giving his account of St.
Polycarp, " were the Apostles and their disciples, in not
even conversing with those who counterfeited the truth. "(
3.
Such a principle, however, would but have broken up
the Church the sooner, resolving it into the individuals
of which it was composed, unless the Truth, to which they
were to bear witness, had been a something definite, and
formal, and independent of themselves. Christians were
bound to defend and to transmit the faith which they had
received, and they received it from the rulers of the
6 Euseb. Hist. iv. 14, v. 20.
SECT. I. § 5.] DOGMA. 349
Church ; and, on the other hand, it was the duty of those
rulers to watch over and define this traditionary faith. It
is unnecessary to go over ground which has been traversed
so often of late years. St. Irenseus brings the subject
before us in his description of St. Polycarp, part of which
has already been quoted ; and to it we may limit ourselves.
" Polycarp," he says when writing against the Gnostics,
" whom we have seen in our first youth, ever taught those
lessons which he learned from the Apostles, which the
Church also transmits, which alone are true. All the
Churches of Asia bear witness to them ; and the successors
of Polycarp down to this day, who is a much more trust-
worthy and sure witness of truth than Yalentinus, Marcion,
or their perverse companions. The same was in Rome in
the time of Anicetus, and converted many of the afore-
named heretics to the Church of God, preaching that he
had received from the Apostles this one and only truth,
which had been transmitted by the Church." 7
4.
Nor was this the doctrine and practice of one school only,
which might be ignorant of philosophy ; the cultivated
minds of the Alexandrian Fathers, who are said to owe so
much to Pagan science, certainly showed no gratitude or
reverence towards their alleged instructors, but maintained
the supremacy of Catholic Tradition. Clement 8 speaks of
heretical teachers as perverting Scripture, and essaying the
gate of heaven with a false key, not raising the veil, as he
and his, by means of tradition from Christ, but digging
through the Church's wall, and becoming mystagogues of
misbelief ; " for," he continues, " few words are enough to
prove that they have formed their human assemblies later
than the Catholic Church," and " from that previously
existing and most true Church it is very clear that these
7 Contr. Haer. iii. 3, § 4. 8 Ed. Potter, p. 897.
350 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
later heresies, and others which have been since, are coun-
terfeit and novel inventions." t( When the Marcionites,
Yalentinians, and the like," says Origen, "appeal to
apocryphal works, they are saying, ' Christ is in the
desert ; ' when to canonical Scripture, ' Lo, He is in the
chambers ; ' but we must not depart from that first and
ecclesiastical tradition, nor believe otherwise than as the
Churches of God by succession have transmitted to us."
And it is recorded of him in his youth, that he never could
be brought to attend the prayers of a heretic who was in
the house of his patroness, from abomination of his doctrine,
"observing," adds Eusebius, " the rule of the Church."
Eusebius too himself, unsatisfactory as is his own theology,
cannot break from this fundamental rule ; he ever speaks
of the Gnostic teachers, the chief heretics of his period
(at least before the rise of Arianism) , in terms most expres-
sive of abhorrence and disgust.
5.
The African, Syrian, and Asian schools are additional
witnesses; Tertullian at Carthage was strenuous for the
dogmatic principle even after he had given up the tra-
ditional. The Fathers of Asia Minor, who excommuni-
cated Noe'tus, rehearse the Creed, and add, " We declare
as we have learned ;" the Fathers of Antioch, who depose
Paul of Samosata, set down in writing the Creed from
Scripture, " which/' they say, " we received from the
beginning, and have, by tradition and in custody, in the
Catholic and Holy Church, until this day, by succession,
as preached by the blessed Apostles, who were eye-witnesses
and ministers of the Word." l
9 Ed. Potter, p. 899.
1 Clem. Strom, vii. 17. Origen in Matth. Comm. Ser. 46. Euseb. Hist,
vi. 2, fin. Epiph. Haer. 57, p. 480. Routh, t. 2, p. 465.
SECT. I. § 5.] DOGMA. 351
6.
And it is as plain, or even plainer, that what the Chris-
tians of the first ages anathematized, included deductions
from the Articles of Faith, that is, false developments, as
well as contradictions of those Articles. And, since the
reason they commonly gave for using the anathema was that
the doctrine in question was strange and startling, it follows
that the truth, which was its contradictory, was also in some
respect unknown to them hitherto ; which is also shown by
their temporary perplexity, and their difficulty of meeting
heresy, in particular cases. " Who ever heard the like
hitherto ? " says St. Athanasius, of Apollinarianism ;
" who was the teacher of it, who the hearer ? ' From Sion
shall go forth the Law of Gfod, and the "Word of the Lord
from Jerusalem ; ' but from whence hath this gone forth ?
What hell hath burst out with it ? " The Fathers at
Nicaea stopped their ears ; St. Irenaeus, as above quotod,
says that St. Polycarp, had he heard the Gnostic blasphe-
mies, would have stopped his ears, and deplored the times
for which he was reserved. They anathematized the
doctrine, not because it was old, but because it was new :
the anathema would have altogether slept, if it could
not have been extended to propositions not anathematized
in the beginning ; for the very characteristic of heresy is
this novelty and originality of manifestation.
Such was the exclusiveness of Christianity of old : I need
not insist on the steadiness with which that principle has
been maintained ever 'since, for bigotry and intolerance
is one of the ordinary charges brought at this day against
both the medieval Church and the modern.
7.
The Church's consistency and thoroughness in teaching is
another aspect of the same principle, as is illustrated in the
352 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
following passage from M. Guizot/s History of Civilization.
"The adversaries/' he says, "of the Reformation, knew
very well what they were about, and what they required ;
they could point to their first principles, and boldly admit
all the consequences that might result from them. No
government was ever more consistent and systematic than
that of the Romish Church. In fact, the Court of Rome
was much more accommodating, yielded much more
than the Reformers ; but in principle it much more
completely adopted its own system, and maintained a
much more consistent conduct. There is an immense
power in this full confidence of what is done ; this
perfect knowledge of what is required ; this complete
and rational adaptation of a system and a creed. " Then
he goes on to the history of the Society of Jesus in illus-
tration. "Everything/' he says, "was unfavourable to
the Jesuits, both fortune and appearances ; neither prac-
tical sense which requires success, nor the imagination
which looks for splendour, were gratified by their destiny.
Still it is certain that they possessed the elements of great-
ness ; a grand idea is attached to their name, to their
influence, and to their history. Why? because they
worked from fixed principles, which they fully and clearly
understood, and the tendency of which they entirely compre-
hended. In the Reformation, on the contrary, when the
event surpassed its conception, something incomplete, incon-
sequent, and narrow Las remained, which has placed the
conquerors themselves in a state of rational and philosophi-
cal inferiority, the influence of which fcas occasionally been
felt in events.. The conflict of the new spiritual order of
things against the old, is, I think, the weak side of the
Reformation." 2
2 Eur. Civil, pp. 394— 398.
SECT. I. § 6.] ADDITIONAL REMARKS. 353
§ 6. Additional Remarks.
Such are some of the intellectual principles which are
characteristic of Christianity. I observe, —
That their continuity down to this day, and the vigour
of their operation, are two distinct guarantees that the
theological conclusions to which they are subservient are,
in accordance with the Divine Promise, true developments,
and not corruptions of the Rev elation.
Moreover, if it be true that the principles of the later
Church are the same as those of the earlier, then, whatever
are the variations of belief between the two periods, the
later in reality agrees more than it differs with the earlier,
for principles are responsible for doctrines. Hence they
who assert that the modern Roman system is the corrup-
tion of primitive theology are forced to discover some
difference of principle between the one and the other ; for
instance, that the right -of private judgment was secured to
the early Church and has been lost to the later, or, again, that
the later Church rationalizes and the earlier went by faith.
2.
On this point I will but remark as follows. It cannot
be doubted that the horror of heresy, the law of absolute
obedience to ecclesiastical authority, and the doctrine of
the mystical virtue of unity, were as strong and active in
the Church of St. Ignatius and St. Cyprian as in that of
St. Carlo and St. Pius the Fifth, whatever be thought of
the theology respectively taught in the one and in the
other. Now we have before our eyes the effect of these
principles in the instance of the later Church ; they have
entirely succeeded in preventing departure from the doc-
trine of Trent for three hundred years. Have we any
reason for doubting, that from the same strictness the same
fidelity would follow, in the first three, or any three, cen-
turies of the Ante-tridentine period ? Where then was
A a
354 APPLICATION OF THE SECOND NOTE. [CH. VII.
the opportunity of corruption in the three hundred years
between St. Ignatius and St. Augustine ? or between St.
Augustine and St. Bede ? or between St. Bede and St.
Peter Damiani ? or again, between St. Irenseus and St. Leo,
St. Cyprian and St. Gregory the Great, St. Athanasius
and St. John Damascene ? Thus the tradition of eighteen
centuries becomes a collection of indefinitely many catencs,
each commencing from its own point, and each crossing the
other ; and each year, as it comes, is guaranteed with various
degrees of cogency by every year which has gone before it.
3.
Moreover,, while the development of doctrine in the
Church has been in accordance with, or in consequence of
these immemorial principles, the various heresies, which
have from time to time arisen, have in one respect or other,
as might be expected, violated those principles with which
she rose into existence, and which she still retains. Thus
Arian and Nestorian schools denied the allegorical rule
of Scripture interpretation ; the Gnostics and Eunomians
for Faith professed to substitute knowledge ; and the
Manichees also, as St. Augustine so touchingly declares
in the beginning of his work De TTtilitate credendi. The
dogmatic Rule, at least so far as regards its traditional
character, was thrown aside by all those sects which, as
Tertullian tells us, claimed to judge for themselves from
Scripture ; and the Sacramental principle was violated,
ipso facto, by all who separated from the Church, was
denied too by Faustus the Manichee when he argued
against the Catholic ceremonial, by Vigilantius in his
opposition to relics, and by the Iconoclasts. In like manner
the contempt of mystery, of reverence, of devoutness, of
sanctity, are other notes of the heretical spirit. As to Pro-
testantism it is plain in how many ways it has reversed the
principles of Catholic theology.
CHAPTER VIII.
APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE OF A TRUE
DEVELOPMENT.
ASSIMILATIVE POWER.
SINCE religious systems, true and false, have one and
the same great and comprehensive subject-matter, they
necessarily interfere with one another as rivals, both in
those points in which they agree together, and in those
in which they differ. That Christianity on its rise was
in these circumstances of competition and controversy, is
sufficiently evident even from a foregoing Chapter : it
was surrounded by rites, sects, and philosophies, which
contemplated the same questions, sometimes advocated the
same truths, and in no slight degree wore the same ex-
ternal appearance. It could not stand still, it could not
take its own way, and let them take theirs : they came
across its path, and a conflict was inevitable. The very
nature of a true philosophy relatively to other systems is to
be polemical, eclectic, unitive : Christianity was polemical ;
it could not but be eclectic ; but was it also unitive ?
Had it the power, while keeping its own identity, of
absorbing its antagonists, as Aaron's rod, according to St.
Jerome's illustration, devoured the rods of the sorcerers of
Egypt ? Did it incorporate them into itself, or was it
dissolved into them ? Did it assimilate them into its own
A a 2
356 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [cH. VIII.
substance, or, keeping its name, was it simply infected by
them ? In a word, were its developments faithful or
corrupt ? Nor is this a question merely of the early
centuries. When we consider the deep interest of the
controversies which Christianity raises, the various charac-
ters of mind it has swayed, the range of subjects which it
embraces, the many countries it has entered, the deep
philosophies it has encountered, the vicissitudes it has under-
gone, and the length of time through which it has lasted,
it requires some assignable explanation, why we should
not consider it substantially modified and changed, that is,
corrupted, from the first, by the numberless influences to
which it has been exposed.
2.
Now there was this cardinal distinction between Chris-
tianity and the religions and philosophies by which it was
surrounded, nay even the Judaism of the day, that it
referred all truth and revelation to one source, and that
the Supreme and Only Grod. Pagan rites which honoured
one or other out of ten thousand deities ; philosophies
which scarcely taught any source of revelation at all ;
Gnostic heresies which were based on Dualism, adored
angels, or ascribed the two Testaments to distinct authors,
could not regard truth as one, unalterable, consistent,
imperative, and saving. But Christianity started with
the principle that there was but "one Grod and one
Mediator," aad that He, " who at sundry times and in
divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
Prophets, had in these last days spoken unto us by His
Sou." He had never left Himself without witness, and
now He had come, not to undo the past, but to fulfil
and perfect it. His Apostles, and they alone, possessed,
venerated, and protected a Divine Message, as both sacred
and sanctifying; and, in the collision and conflict of
SECT. !.§!.] THE SAFEGUARD OF DOGMATIC TRUTH. 357
opinions, in ancient times or modern, it was that Message,
and not any vague or antagonist teaching, that was to
succeed in purifying, assimilating, transmuting, and taking
into itself the many-coloured beliefs, forms of worship,
codes of duty, schools of thought, through which it was ever
moving. It was Grace, and it was Truth.
§ 1. The Safeguard of Dogmatic Truth.
That there is a truth then ; that there is one truth ;
that religious error is in itself of an immoral nature ; that
its maintainers, unless involuntarily such, are guilty in
maintaining it ; that it is to be dreaded ; that the search
for truth is not the gratification of curiosity ; that its
attainment has nothing of the excitement of a discovery ;
that the mind is below truth, not above it, and is bound,
not to descant upon it, but to venerate it ; that truth and
falsehood are set before us for the trial of our hearts ; that
our choice is an awful giving forth of lots on which salva-
tion or rejection is inscribed ; that " before all things it is
necessary to hold the Catholic faith ;" that " he that would
be saved must thus think," and not otherwise ; that, " if
thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for
understanding, if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest
for her as for hid treasure, then shalt thou understand the
fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God/' — this
is the dogmatical principle, which has strength.
That truth and falsehood in religion are but matter of
opinion ; that one doctrine is as good as another ; that the
Governor of the world does not intend that we should
gain the truth ; that there is no truth ; that we are not
more acceptable to God by believing this than by believing
that ; that no one is answerable for his opinions ; that they
are a matter of necessity or accident ; that it is enough if
we sincerely hold what we profess ; that our merit lies in
358 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. VIII.
seeking, not in possessing ; that it is a duty to follow what
seems to us true, without a fear lest it should not be true ;
that it may be a gain to succeed, and can be no harm to
fail ; that we may take up and lay down opinions at
pleasure ; that belief belongs to the mere intellect, not to
the heart also ; that we may safely trust to ourselves in
matters of Faith, and need no other guide, — this is the
principle of philosophies and heresies, which is very
weakness.
2.
Two opinions encounter ; each may be abstractedly true ;
or again, each may be a subtle, comprehensive doctrine,
vigorous, elastic, expansive, various; one is held as t£
matter of indifference, the other as a matter of life and
death ; one is held by the intellect only, the other also by
the heart : it is plain which of the two must succumb to
the other. Such was the conflict of Christianity with the
old established Paganism, which was almost dead before
Christianity appeared ; with the Oriental Mysteries, flit-
ting wildly to and fro like spectres ; with the Grnostics,
who made Knowledge all in all, despised the many, and
called Catholics mere children in the Truth ; with the
Neo-platonists, men of literature, pedants, visionaries, or
courtiers; with the Manichees, who professed to seek
Truth by Reason, not by Faith ; with the fluctuating
teachers of the school of Antioch, the time-serving
Eusebians, and the reckless versatile Arians ; with the fa-
natic Montanists and harsh Novatians, who shrank from the
Catholic doctrine, without power to propagate their own.
These sects had no stay or consistence, yet they contained
elements of truth amid their error, and had Christianity
been as they, it might have resolved into them ; but it had
that hold of the truth which gave its teaching a gravity, a
directness, a consistency, a sternness, and a force, to which
SECT. I. § 1.] THE SAFEGUARD OF DOGMATIC TRUTH. 359
its rivals for the most part were strangers. It could not
call evil good, or good evil, because it discerned the dif-
ference between them ; it could not make light of what
was so solemn, or desert what was so solid. Hence, in the
collision, it broke in pieces its antagonists, and divided the
spoils.
3.
This was but another form of the spirit that made mar-
tyrs. Dogmatism was in teaching, what confession was in
act. Each was the same strong principle of life in a
different aspect, distinguishing the faith which was dis-
played in it from the world's philosophies on the one side,
and the world's religions on the other. The heathen sects
and the heresies of Christian history were dissolved by the
breath of opinion which made them ; paganism shuddered
and died at the very sight of the sword of persecution,
which it had itself unsheathed. Intellect and force were
applied as tests both upon the divine and upon the human
work ; they prevailed with the human, they did but be-
come instruments of the Divine. "No one," says St.
Justin, " has so believed Socrates as to die for the doctrine
which he taught." " No one was ever found undergoing
death for faith in the sun." l Thus Christianity grew in
its proportions, gaining aliment and medicine from all
that it came near, yet preserving its original type, from
its perception and its love of what had been revealed once
for all and was no private imagination.
4.
There are writers who refer to the first centuries of the
Church as a time when opinion was free, and the conscience
exempt from the obligation or temptation to take on trust
what it had not proved ; and that, apparently on the mere
1 Justin, Apol. ii. 10, Tryph. 121.
360 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. VIII.
ground that the series of great theological decisions did not
commence till the fourth. This seems to be M. Guizot's
meaning when he says that Christianity "in the early ages
was a belief, a sentiment, an individual conviction ;" 2 that
"the Christian society appears as a pure association of men
animated by the same sentiments and professing the same
creed. The first Christians," he continues, " assembled to
enjoy together the same emotions, the same religious con-
victions. We do not find any doctrinal system established,
any form of discipline or of laws, or any body of magis-
trates." 3 What can be meant by saying that Christianity
had no magistrates in the earliest ages ? — but, any how,
in statements such as these the distinction is not properly
recognized between a principle and its exhibitions and in-
stances, even if the fact were a& is represented. The
principle indeed of Dogmatism developes into Councils in
the course of time ; but it was active, nay sovereign from
the first, in every part of Christendom. A conviction that
truth was one ; that it was a gift from without, a sacred
trust, an inestimable blessing ; that it was to be reverenced,
guarded, defended, transmitted; that its absence was a
grievous want, and its loss an unutterable calamity ; and
again, the stern words and acts of St. John, of Polycarp,
Ignatius, Irenseus, Clement, Tertullian, and Origen; — all
this is quite consistent with perplexity or mistake as to
what was truth in particular cases, in what way doubtful
questions were to be decided, or what were the limits of
the Revelation. Councils and Popes are the guardians
and instruments of the dogmatic principle : they are not
that principle themselves ; they presuppose the principle ;
they are summoned into action at the call of the principle,
and the principle might act even before they had their
legitimate place, and exercised a recognized power, in the
movements of the Christian body.
2 Europ. Civ. p. 56, tr. 3 p. 58.
SECT. I. § 1.] THE SAFEGUARD OF DOGMATIC TRUTH. 361
5.
The instance of Conscience, which has already served us
in illustration, may assist us here. What Conscience is in
the history of an individual mind, such was the dogmatic
principle in the history of Christianity. Both in the one
case and the other, there is the gradual formation of a
directing power out of a principle. The natural voice of
Conscience is far more imperative in testifying and
enforcing a rule of duty, than successful in determining that
duty in particular cases. It acts as a messenger from above,
and says that there is a right and a wrong, and that the
right must be followed ; but it is variously, and therefore
erroneously, trained in the instance of various persons.
It mistakes error for truth ; and yet we believe that on the
whole, and even in those cases where it is ill-instructed, if
its voice be diligently obeyed, it will gradually be cleared,
simplified, and perfected, so that minds, starting differently
will, if honest, in course of time converge to one and the
same truth. I do not hereby imply that there is indistinct-
ness so great as this in the theology of the first centuries ;
but so far is plain, that the early Church and Fathers
exercised far more a ruler's than a doctor's office : it was
the age of Martyrs, of acting not of thinking. Doctors
succeeded Martyrs, as light and peace of conscience follow
upon obedience to it; yet, even before the Church had
grown into the full measure of its doctrines, it was rooted
in its principles.
' 6.
So far, however, may be granted to M, Guizot, that
even principles were not so well understood and so care-
fully handled at first, as they were afterwards. In the
early period, we see traces of a conflict, as well as of a
variety, in theological elements, which were in course of
combination, but which required adjustment and manage-
362 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. VIII.
ment before they could be used with precision as one. In
a thousand instances of a minor character, the statements
of the early Fathers are but tokens of the multiplicity of
openings which the mind of the Church was making into
the treasure-house of Truth ; real openings, but incomplete
or irregular. Nay, the doctrines even of the heretical
bodies are indices and anticipations of the mind of the
Church. As the first step in settling a question of doc-
trine is to raise and debate it, so heresies in every age may
be taken as the measure of the existing state of thought
in the Church, and of the movement of her theology ; they
determine in what way the current is setting, and the rate
at which it flows.
7.
Thus, St. Clement may be called the representative of
the eclectic element, and Tertullian of the dogmatic,
neither element as yet being fully understood by Catho-
lics ; and Clement perhaps went too far in his accommoda-
tion to philosophy, and Tertullian asserted with exaggera-
tion the immutability of the Creed. Nay, the two
antagonist principles of dogmatism and assimilation are
found in Tertullian alone, though with some deficiency of
amalgamation, and with a greater leaning towards the
dogmatic. Though the Montanists professed to pass over
the subject of doctrine, it is chiefly in Tertullian's Mon-
tanistic works that his strong statements occur of the
unalterableness of the Creed ; and extravagance on the
subject is not only in keeping with the stern and vehe-
ment temper of that Father, but with the general severity
and harshness of his sect. On the other hand the very
foundation of Montanism is development, though not of
doctrine, yet of discipline and conduct. It is said that its
founder professed himself the promised Comforter, through
whom the Church was to be perfected ; he provided pro-
SECT. I. § 1.] THE SAFEGUARD OF DOGMATIC TRUTH. 363
phets as organs of the new revelation, and called Catholics
Psychici or animal. Tertullian distinctly recognizes even
the process of development in one of his Montanistic
works. After speaking of an innovation upon usage,
which his newly revealed truth required, he proceeds,
' ' Therefore hath the Lord sent the Paraclete, that, since
human infirmity could not take all things in at once, dis-
cipline might be gradually directed, regulated and brought
to perfection by the Lord's Yicar, the Holy Ghost. * I
have yet many things to say to you/ He saith, &c. What is
this dispensation of the Paraclete but this, that discipline
is directed, Scriptures opened, intellect reformed, im-
provements effected? Nothing can take place without
age, and all things wait their time. In short, the Preacher
says * There is a time for all things/ Behold the creature
itself gradually advancing to fruit. At first there is a
seed, and a stalk springs out of the seed, and from the
stalk bursts out a shrub, and then its branches and foliage
grow vigorous, and all that we mean by a tree is unfolded ;
then there is the swelling of the bud, and the bud is re-
solved into a blossom, and the blossom is opened into a
fruit, and it for a while rudimental and unformed, till, by
degrees following out its life, it is matured into mellowness
of flavour. So too righteousness, (for there is the same
God both of righteousness and of the creation,) was at first
in its rudiments, a nature fearing God ; thence, by means
of Law and Prophets, it advanced into infancy ; thence,
by the gospel, it burst forth into its youth ; and now by the
Paraclete, it is fashioned 'in to maturity." 4
8.
Not in one principle or doctrine only, but in its whole
system, Montanism is a remarkable anticipation or pre-
4 De Virg. Vel. 1. '
364 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. VIII.
sage of developments which soon began to show them-
selves in the Church, though they were not perfected for
centuries after. Its rigid maintenance of the original
Creed, yet its admission of a development, at least in the
ritual, has just been instanced in the person of Tertullian.
Equally Catholic in their principle, whether in fact or
anticipation, were most of the other peculiarities of Mon-
tanism : its rigorous fasts, its visions, its commendation of
celibacy and martyrdom, its contempt of temporal goods,
its penitential discipline, and its centre of unity. The
doctrinal determinations and the ecclesiastical usages of
the middle ages are the true fulfilment of its self-willed
and abortive attempts at precipitating the growth of the
Church. The favour shown to it for a while by Pope
Victor is an evidence of its external resemblance to
orthodoxy ; and the celebrated Martyrs and Saints in
Africa, in the beginning of the third century, Perpetua
and Felicitas, or at least their Acts, betoken that same
peculiar temper of religion, which, when cut off from the
Church a few years afterwards, quickly degenerated into
a heresy. A parallel instance occurs in the case of the
Donatists. They held a doctrine on the subject of Bap-
tism similiar to that of St. Cyprian : " Yincentius Liri-
nensis," says Gibbon, referring to Tillemont's remarks on
that resemblance, " has explained why the Donatists are
eternally burning with the devil, while St. Cyprian reigns
in heaven with Jesus Christ." 5 And his reason is in-
telligible : it is, says Tillemont, " as St. Augustine often
says, because the Donatists had broken the bond of peace
and charity with the other Churches, which St. Cyprian
had preserved so carefully." 6
9.
These are specimens of the raw material, as it may be
5 Hist. t. 3, p. 312. « Mem. Eccl. t. 6, p. 83.
SECT. !.§!.] THE SAFEGUARD OF DOGMATIC TRUTH. 365
called, which, whether as found in individual Fathers
within the pale of the Church, or in heretics external to
it, she had the power, by means of the continuity and
firmness of her principles, to convert to her own uses.
She alone has succeeded in thus rejecting evil without
sacrificing the good, and in holding together in one
things which in all other schools are incompatible.
Gnostic or Platonic words are found in the inspired
theology of St. John ; to the Platonists Unitarian writers
trace the doctrine of our Lord's divinity ; Gibbon the idea
of the Incarnation to the Gnostics. The Gnostics too
seem first to have systematically thrown the intellect
upon matters of faith ; and the very term " Gnostic " has
been taken by Clement to express his perfect Christian.
And, though ascetics existed from the beginning, the
notion of a religion higher than the Christianity of the
many, was first prominently brought forward by the
Gnostics, Montanists, Novatians, and Manichees. And
while the prophets of the Montanists prefigure the
Church's Doctors, and their professed inspiration her
infallibility, and their revelations her developments, and
the heresiarch himself is the unsightly anticipation of
St. Francis, in Novatian again we discern the aspiration
of nature after such creations of grace as St. Benedict or
St. Bruno. And so the effort of Sabellius to complete
the enunciation of the mystery of the Ever-blessed Trinity
failed: it became a heresy; grace would not be con-
strained ; the course of thought could not be forced ; — at
length was realized in the true Unitarianism of St.
Augustine.
10.
Doctrine too is percolated, as it were, through different
minds, beginning with writers of inferior authority in the
Church, and issuing at length in the enunciation of her
366 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. Till.
Doctors. Origen, Tertullian, nay Eusebius and the An-
tiochenes, supply the materials, from which the Fathers
have wrought out comments or treatises. St. Gregory
Nazianzen and St. Basil digested into form the theologi-
cal principles of Origen ; St. Hilary and St. Ambrose are
both indebted to the same great writer in their inter-
pretations of Scripture ; St. Ambrose again has taken his
comment on St. Luke from Eusebius, and certain of his
Tracts from Philo ; St. Cyprian called Tertullian his Mas-
ter ; and traces of Tertullian, in his almost heretical
treatises, may be detected in the most finished sentences
of St. Leo. The school of Antioch, in spite of the here-
tical taint of various of its Masters, formed the genius of
St. Chrysostom. And the Apocryphal gospels have con-
tributed many things for the devotion and edification of
Catholic believers.7
The deep meditation which seems to have been exercised
by the Fathers on points of doctrine, the disputes and
turbulence yet lucid determination which characterize the
Councils, the indecision of Popes, are all in different ways,
at least when viewed together, portions and indications of
the same process. The theology of the Church is no
random combination of various opinions, but a diligent,
patient working out of one doctrine from many materials.
The conduct of Popes, Councils, Fathers, betokens the
slow, painful, anxious taking up of new elements into an
existing body of belief. St. Athanasius, St. Augustine,
St. Leo are conspicuous for the repetition in terminis of
their own theological statements ; on the contrary, it has
been observed of the heterodox Tertullian, that his works
" indicate no ordinary fertility of mind in that he so little
repeats himself or recurs to favourite thoughts, as is fre-
quently the case even with the great St. Augustine."
^ Galland. t. 3, p. 673, note 3.
8 Vid. Preface to Oxford Transl. of Tertullian, where the character of
his mind is admirably drawn out.
SECT. I. § 1.] THE SAFEGUARD OF DOGMATIC TRUTH. 367
11.
Here we see the difference between originality of
mind and the gift and calling of a Doctor in the Church ;
the holy Fathers just mentioned were intently fixing their
minds on what they taught, grasping it more and more
closely, viewing it on various sides, trying its consistency,
weighing their own separate expressions . And thus if in
some cases they were even left in ignorance, the next
generation of teachers completed their work, for the same
unwearied anxious process of thought went on. St. Gre-
gory Nyssen finishes the investigations of St. Athanasius ;
St. Leo guards the polemical statements of St. Cyril.
Clement may hold a purgatory, yet tend to consider all
punishment purgatorial ; St. Cyprian may hold the un-
sanctified state of heretics, but include in his doctrine a
denial of their baptism ; St. Hippolytus may believe in
the personal existence of the "Word from eternity, yet
speak confusedly on the eternity of His Sonship ; the Coun-
cil of Antioch might put aside the Homoiision, and the
Council of Nicsea impose it ; St. Hilary may believe in
a purgatory, yet confine it to the day of judgment ;
St. Athanasius and other Fathers may treat with almost
supernatural exactness the doctrine of our Lord's incar-
nation, yet imply, as far as words go, that He was igno-
rant in His human nature ; the Athanasian Creed may
admit the illustration of soul and body, and later Fathers
may discountenance it ; St. Augustine might first be
opposed to the employment of force in religion, and then
acquiesce in it. Prayers for the faithful departed may be
found in the early liturgies, yet with an indistinctness
which included the Blessed Virgin and the Martyrs in
the same rank with the imperfect Christian whose sins
were as yet unexpiated ; and succeeding times might keep
what was exact, and supply what was deficient. Aris-
totle might be reprobated by certain early Fathers, yet
368 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. VIII.
furnish, the phraseology for theological definitions after-
wards. And in a different subject-matter, St. Isidore and
others might be suspicious of the decoration of Churches ;
St. Paulinus and St. Helena advance it. And thus we are
brought on to dwell upon the office of grace, as well as of
truth, in enabling the Church's creed to develope and to
absorb without the risk of corruption.
§ 2. The Safeguard of Sacramental Grace.
There is in truth a certain virtue or grace in the Gospel
which changes the quality of doctrines, opinions, usages,
actions, and personal characters when incorporated with
it, and makes them right and acceptable to its Divine
Author, whereas before they were either infected with evil,
or at best but shadows of the truth. This is the prin-
ciple, above spoken of, which I have called the Sacra-
mental. " We know that we are of God, and the whole
world lieth in wickedness," is an enunciation of the prin-
ciple ; — or, the declaration of the Apostle of the Gentiles,
" If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature ; old
things are passed away, behold all things are become new."
Thus it is that outward rites, which are but worthless in
themselves, lose their earthly character and become
Sacraments under the Gospel ; circumcision, as St. Paul
says, is carnal and has come to an end, yet Baptism is a
perpetual ordinance, as being grafted upon a system which
is grace and truth. Elsewhere, he parallels, while he con-
trasts, " the cup of the Lord " and " the cup of devils," in
this respect, that to partake of either is to hold communion
with the source from which it comes ; and he adds
presently, that " we have been all made to drink into one
Spirit." So again he says, no one is justified by the works
of the old Law ; while both he implies, and St. James
declares, that Christians are justified by works of the New
SECT. I. § 2.] THE SAFEGUARD OF SACRAMENTAL GRACE. 369
Law. Again lie contrasts the exercises of the intellect as
exhibited by heathen and Christian. "Howbeit," he
says, after condemning heathen wisdom, " we speak wisdom
among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this
world ; " and it is plain that nowhere need we look for
more glowing eloquence, more distinct profession of
reasoning, more careful assertion of principles, than are to
be found in the Apostle's writings.
2.
In like manner when the Jewish exorcists attempted to
" call over them which had evil spirits the Name of the
Lord Jesus," the evil spirit professed not to know them,
and inflicted on them a bodily injury ; on the other hand,
the occasion of this attempt of theirs was a stupendous
instance or type, in the person of St. Paul, of the very
principle I am illustrating. " God wrought special
miracles by the hands of Paul, so that from his body were
brought unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons, and the
diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out
of them." The grace given him was communicable,
diffusive ; an influence passing from him to others, and
making what it touched spiritual, as enthusiasm may be,
or tastes or panics.
Parallel instances occur of the operation of this principle
in the history of the Church, as soon as the Apostles were
taken from it. St. Paul denounces distinctions in meat
and drink, the observance of Sabbaths and holy days, and
of ordinances, and the worship of Angels ; yet Christians,
from the first, were rigid in their stated fastings, venerated,
as St. Justin tells us, the Angelic intelligences,9 and
established the observance of the Lord's day as soon as
persecution ceased.
9 Infra, pp. 409—413, &c.
B b
370 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. VIII.
3.
In like manner Celsus objects that Christians did not
" endure the sight of temples, altars, and statues ;" Por-
phyry, that "they blame the rites of worship, victims,
and frankincense ;" the heathen disputant in Minucius
asks, " Why have Christians no altars, no temples, no
conspicuous images ? " and " no sacrifices ;" and yet it is
plain from Tertullian that Christians had altars of their
own, and sacrifices and priests. And that they had
churches is again and again proved by Eusebius who had
seen " the houses of prayer levelled " in the Dioclesian
persecution ; from the history too of St. Gregory Thauma-
turgus, nay from Clement.1 Again, St. Justin and Minu-
cius speak of the form of the Cross in terms of reverence,
quite inconsistent with the doctrine that external emblems
of religion may not be venerated. Tertullian speaks of
Christians signing themselves with it whatever they set
about, whether they walk, eat, or lie down to sleep. In
Eusebius's life of Constantine, the figure of the Cross holds
a most conspicuous place ; the Emperor sees it in the sky
and is converted ; he places it upon his standards ; he
inserts it into his own hand when he puts up his statue ;
wherever the Cross is displayed in his battles, he conquers;
he appoints fifty men to carry it ; he engraves it on his
soldiers' arms ; and Licinius dreads its power. Shortly
after, Julian plainly accuses Christians of worshipping the
wood of the Cross, though they refused to worship the
ancile. In a later age the worship of images was intro-
duced.2
1 Orig. c. Cels. vii. 63, viii. 17 (vid. not. Bened. in loc.), August. Ep.
102, 16; Minuc. F. 10, and 32; Tertull. de Orat. fin. ad Uxor. i. fin.
Euseb. Hist. viii. 2; Clem. Strom, vii. 6, p. 846.
* Tertull. de Cor. 3; Just. Apol. i. 55; Miuuc. P. 29; Julian ap. Cyr.
vi. p. 194, Spauh.
SECT. I. § 2.] THE SAFEGUARD OF SACRAMENTAL GRACE. 371
4.
The principle of the distinction, by which these ob-
servances were pious in Christianity and superstitious in
paganism, is implied in such passages of Tertullian, Lac-
tantius, and others, as speak of evil spirits lurking under
the pagan statues. It is intimated also by Origen, who,
after saying that Scripture so strongly " forbids temples,
altars, and images," that Christians are " ready to go to
death, if necessary, rather than pollute their notion of the
God of all by any such transgression," assigns as a reason
" that, as far as possible, they might not fall into the
notion that images were gods." St. Augustine, in reply-
ing to Porphyry, is more express ; " Those," he says,
" who are acquainted with Old and New Testament do
not blame in the pagan religion the erection of temples or
institution of priesthoods, but that these are done to idols
and devils. . . True religion blames in their superstitions,
not so much their sacrificing, for the ancient saints sacri-
ficed to the True God, as their sacrificing to false gods." s
To Faustus the Manichee he answers, " We have some
things in common with the gentiles, but our purpose is
different," 4 And St. Jerome asks Vigilantius, who made-
objections to lights and oil, " Because we once worshipped
idols, is that a reason why we should not worship God, for
fear of seeming to address him with an honour like that
which was paid to idols and then was detestable, whereas
this is paid to Martyrs and therefore to be received ? " *
5.
Confiding then in the power of Christianity to resist the
infection of evil, and to transmute the very instruments
» Epp. 102, 18. 4 Coutr. Faust, 20, 23.
• Lact. ii. 15, 16; Tertull. Spect. 12; Origen, c. Cels. vii. 64—66;
August. Ep. 102, 18; Contr. Faust, xx. 23; Hieron.'c. Vigil. 8.
B b 2
372 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. VIII.
and appendages of demon-worship to an evangelical use,
and feeling also that these usages had originally come from
primitive revelations and from the instinct of nature,
though they had been corrupted ; and that they must
invent what they needed, if they did not use what they
found ; and that they were moreover possessed of the very
archetypes, of which paganism attempted the shadows;
the rulers of the Church from early times were prepared,
should the occasion arise, to adopt, or imitate, or sanction
the existing rites and customs of the populace, as well as
the philosophy of the educated class.
St. Gregory Thaumaturgus supplies the first instance
on record of this economy. He was the Apostle of
Pontus, and one of his methods for governing an untoward
population is thus related by St. Gregory of Nyssa.
" On returning/7 he says, " to the city, after revisiting the
country round about, he increased the devotion of the peo-
ple everywhere by instituting festive meetings in honour
of those who had fought for the faith. The bodies of the
Martyrs were distributed in different places, and the people
assembled and made merry, as the year came round,
holding festival in their honour. This indeed was a proof
of his great wisdom . . . for, perceiving that the childish
and untrained populace were retained in their idolatrous
error by creature comforts, in order that what was of
first importance should at any rate be secured to them,
viz. that they should look to God in place of their vain
rites, he allowed them to be merry, jovial, and gay at
the monuments of the holy Martyrs, as if their behaviour
would in time undergo a spontaneous change into greater
seriousness and strictness, since faith would lead them to
it ; which has actually been the happy issue in that popu-
lation, all carnal gratification having turned into a spiri-
tual form of rejoicing." 6 There is no reason to suppose
6 Vit. Thaum. p. 1006.
SECT. I. § 2.] THE SAFEGUARD OF SACRAMENTAL GRACE. 373
that the licence here spoken of passed the limits of harm-
less though rude festivity ; for it is observable that the
same reason, the need of holydays for the multitude, is
assigned by Origen, St. Gregory's master, to explain the
establishment of the Lord's Day also, and the Paschal and
the Pentecostal festivals, which have never been viewed
as unlawful compliances ; and, moreover, the people were
in fact eventually reclaimed from their gross habits by his
indulgent policy, a successful issue which could not have
followed an accommodation to what was sinful.
6.
The example set by St. Gregory in an age of persecution
was impetuously followed when a time of peace succeeded.
In the course of the fourth century two movements or
developments spread over the face of Christendom, with a
rapidity characteristic of the Church ; the one ascetic, the
other ritual or ceremonial. We are told in various ways
by Eusebius,7 that Constantine, in order to recommend
the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the
outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in
their own. It is not necessary to go into a subject which
the diligence of Protestant writers has made familiar to
most of us. The use of temples, and these dedicated to
particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with
branches of trees ; incense, lamps, and candles ; votive
offerings on recovery from illness ; holy water ; asylums ;
holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions,
blessings on the fields ; s'acerdotal vestments, the tonsure,
the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a
later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Eyrie
Eleison,3 are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their
adoption into the Church.
7 V. Const, iii. 1, iv. 23, &c.
8 According to Dr. E. D. Clarke, Travels, vol. i. p 352.
374 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. VIII.
7.
The eighth book of Theodoret's work Adversus Gentiles,
which is "On the Martyrs," treats so largety on the
subject, that we must content ourselves with only a speci-
men of the illustrations which it affords, of the principle
acted on by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. " Time, which
makes all things decay," he says, speaking of the Martyrs,
" has preserved their glory incorruptible. For as the
noble souls of those conquerors traverse the heavens, and
take part in the spiritual choirs, so their bodies are not
consigned to separate tombs, but cities and towns di-
vide them among them ; and call them saviours of souls
and bodies, and physicians, and honour them as the pro-
tectors and guardians of cities, and, using their interven-
tion with the Lord of all, obtain through them divine
gifts. And though each body be divided, the grace re-
mains indivisible ; and that small, that tiny particle is
equal in power with the Martyr that hath never been
dispersed about. For the grace which is ever blossoming
distributes the gifts, measuring the bounty according to
the faith of those who come for it.
" Yet not even this persuades you to celebrate their
God, but ye laugh and mock at the honour which is paid
them by all, and consider it a pollution to approach their
tombs. But though all men made a jest of them, yet at
least the Greeks could not decently complain, to whom
belonged libations and expiations, and heroes and demi-
gods and deified men. To Hercules, though a man . . . and
compelled to serve Eurystheus, they built temples, and
constructed altars, and offered sacrifices in honour, and
allotted feasts ; and that, not Spartans only and Athe-
nians, but the whole of Greece and the greater part of
Europe."
SECT. I. § 2.] THE SAFEGUARD OF SACRAMENTAL GRACE. 375
8.
Then, after going through the history of many heathen
deities, and referring to the doctrine of the philosophers
about great men, and to the monuments of kings and
emperors, all of which at once are witnesses and are in-
ferior, to the greatness of the Martyrs, he continues : " To
their shrines we come, not once or twice a year or five
times, but often do we hold celebrations ; often, nay daily,
do we present hymns to their Lord. And the sound in
health ask for its preservation, and those who struggle
with any disease for a release from their sufferings ; the
childless for children, the barren to become mothers, and
those who enjoy the blessing for its safe keeping. Those
too who are setting out for a foreign land beg that the
Martyrs may be their fellow-travellers and guides of the
journey ; those who have come safe back acknowledge
the grace, not coming to them as to gods, but beseeching
them as divine men, and asking their intercession. And
that they obtain what they ask in faith, their dedications
openly witness, in token of their cure. For some bring
likenesses of eyes, others of feet, others of hands ; some of
gold, others of silver ; and their Lord accepts even the
small and cheap, measuring the gift by the offerer's ability
.... Philosophers and Orators are consigned to oblivion,
and kings and captains are not known even by name to
the many ; but the names of the Martyrs are better known
to all than the names of those dearest to them. And they
make a point of giving them to their children, with a view
of gaining for them thereby safety and protection. . . .
Nay, of the so-called gods, so utterly have the sacred
places been destroyed, that not even their outline remains,
nor the shape of their altars is known to men of this
generation, while their materials have been dedicated to the
shrines of the Martyrs. For the Lord has introduced Plis
376 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. VIII.
own dead in place of your gods ; of the one He hath
made a riddance, on the other He hath conferred their
honours. For the Pandian festival, the Diasia, and the
Dionysia, and your other such, we have the feasts of
Peter, of Paul, of Thomas, of Sergius, of Marcellus, of
Leontius, of Panteleemon, of Antony, of Maurice, and of
the other Martyrs ; and for that old-world procession, and
indecency of work and word, are held modest festivities,
without intemperance, or revel, or laughter, but with
divine hymns, and attendance on holy discourses and
prayers, adorned with laudable tears." This was the
view of the " Evidences of Christianity " which a Bishop
of the fifth century offered for the conversion of un-
believers.
9.
The introduction of Images was still later, and met with
more opposition in the West than in the East. It is
grounded on the same great principle which I am illus-
trating ; and as I have given extracts from Theodoret for
the developments of the fourth and fifth centuries, so will
I now cite St. John Damascene in defence of the further
developments of the eighth.
" As to the passages you adduce/' he says to his oppo-
nents, " they abominate not the worship paid to our Images,
but that of the Greeks, who made them gods. It needs
not therefore, because of the absurd use of the Greeks, to
abolish our use which is so pious. Enchanters and wizards
use adjurations, so does the Church over its Catechumens ;
but they invoke devils, and she invokes God against
devils. Greeks dedicate images to devils, and call them
gods ; but we to True God Incarnate, and to God's servants
and friends, who drive away the troops of devils/59 Again,
" As the holy Fathers overthrew the temples and shrines
of the devils, and raised in their places shrines in the
9 De Iinag. 1. 24.
SECT. I. § 2.] THE SAFEGUARD OF SACRAMENTAL GRACE. 377
names of Saints and we worship them, so also they over-
threw the images of the devils, and in their stead raised
images of Christ, and God's Mother, and the Saints. And
under the Old Covenant, Israel neither raised temples in
the name of men, nor was memory of man made a festival ;
for, as yet, man's nature was under a curse, and death was
condemnation, and therefore was lamented, and a corpse
was reckoned unclean and he who touched it ; but now
that the Godhead has been combined with our nature, as
some life-giving and saving medicine, our nature has been
glorified and is trans-elemented into incorruption. Where-
fore the death of Saints is made a feast, and temples are
raised to them, and Images are painted. . . For the Image
is a triumph, and a manifestation, and a monument in
memory of the victory of those who have done nobly and
excelled, and of the shame of the devils defeated and over-
thrown/' Once more, " If because of the Law thou dost
forbid Images, you will soon have to sabbatize and be
circumcised, for these ordinances the Law commands as
indispensable ; nay, to observe the whole law, and not to
keep the festival of the Lord's Pascha out of Jerusalem :
but know that if you keep the Law, Christ hath profited
you nothing .... But away with this, for whoever of
you are justified in the Law have fallen from grace." l
10.
It is quite consistent with the tenor of these remarks to
observe, or to allow, that real superstitions have sometimes
obtained in parts of Christendom from its intercourse with
the heathen ; or have even been admitted, or all but ad-
mitted, though commonly resisted strenuously, by autho-
rities in the Church, in consequence of the resemblance
which exists between the heathen rites and certain portions
of her ritual. As philosophy has at times corrupted her
1 Ibid. ii. 11. 14.
378 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [CH. VIII.
divines, so has paganism corrupted her worshippers ; and
as the more intellectual have been involved in heresy, so
have the ignorant been corrupted by superstition. Thus
St. Chrysostom is vehement against the superstitious
usages which Jews and Gentiles were introducing among
Christians at Antioch and Constantinople. " What shall
we say," he asks in one place, " about the amulets and
bells which are hung upon the hands, and the scarlet
woof, and other things full of such extreme folly ; when
they ought to invest the child with nothing else save the
protection of the Cross ? But now that is despised which
hath converted the whole world, and given the sore wound
to the devil, and overthrown all his power ; while the
thread, and the woof, and the other amulets of that kind,
are entrusted with the child's safety." After mentioning
further superstitions, he proceeds, " Now that among
Greeks such things should be done, is no wonder ; but
among the worshippers of the Cross, and partakers in un-
speakable mysteries, and professors of such morality, that
such unseemliness should prevail, this is especially to be
deplored again and again." 2
And in like manner St. Augustine suppressed the feasts
called Agapae, which had been allowed the African Chris-
tians on their first conversion. "It is time," he says,
" for men who dare not deny that they are Christians, to
begin to live according to the will of Christ, and, now
being Christians, to reject what was only allowed that
they might become Christians." The people objected the
example of the Vatican Church at Rome, where such
feasts were observed every day ; St. Augustine answered,
" I have heard that it has been often prohibited, but the
place is far off from the Bishop's abode (the Lateran), and
in so large a city there is a multitude of carnal persons,
especially of strangers who resort daily thither." 3 And
* Horn. xii. in Cor. 1, Oxf. Tr. 3 Fleury, Hist. xx. 11, Oxf. Tr.
SECT. I. § 2.] THE SAFEGUARD OF SACRAMENTAL GRACE. 379
in like manner it certainly is possible that the conscious-
ness of the sanctifying power in Christianity may have
acted as a temptation to sins, whether of deceit or of
violence ; as if the habit or state of grace destroyed the
sinfulness of certain acts, or as if the end justified the
means.
11.
It is but enunciating in other words the principle we
are tracing, to say that the Church has been entrusted
with the dispensation of grace. For if she can convert
heathen appointments into spiritual rites and usages, what
is this but to be in possession of a treasure, and to exercise
a discretionary power in its application ? Hence there
has been from the first much variety and change, in the
Sacramental acts and instruments which she has used.
While the Eastern and African Churches baptized heretics
on their reconciliation, the Church of Home, as the Catholic
Church since, maintained that imposition of hands was
sufficient, if their prior baptism had been formally
correct. The ceremony of imposition of hands was used
on various occasions with a distinct meaning ; at the rite
of Catechumens, on admitting heretics, in Confirmation,
in Ordination, in Benediction. Baptism was sometimes
administered by immersion, sometimes by infusion. Infant
Baptism was not at first enforced as afterwards. Children or
even infants were admitted to the Eucharist in the African
Church and the rest of the West, as now in the Greek.
Oil had various uses, as 'for healing the sick, or as in the
rite of extreme unction. Indulgences in works or in
periods of penance, had a different meaning, according to
circumstances. In like manner the Sign of the Cross was
one of the earliest means of grace ; then holy seasons, and
holy places, and pilgrimage to them; holy water; pre-
scribed prayers, or other observances ; garments, as the
380 APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE. [cH. VIII.
scapular, or coronation robes ; the rosary ; the crucifix.
And for some wise purpose doubtless, such as that of
showing the power of the Church in the dispensation of
divine grace, as well as the perfection and spirituality of
the Eucharistic Presence, the Chalice is in the West with-
held from all but the celebrant in the Holy Eucharist.
CHAPTER IX.
APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH NOTE OF A TEUE
DEVELOPMENT.
LOGICAL SEQUENCE.
LOGICAL Sequence lias been set down above as a fourth
test of fidelity in development, and snail now be briefly
illustrated in the history of Christian doctrine. That is,,
I mean to give instances of one doctrine leading to another ;
so that, if the former be admitted, the latter can hardly be
denied, and the latter can hardly be called a corruption
without taking exception to the former. And I use
" logical sequence " in contrast both to that process of
incorporation and assimilation which was last under
review, and also to that principle of science, which has put
into order and defended the developments after they have
been made. Accordingly it will include any progress of
the mind from one judgment to another, as, for instance,
by way of moral fitness, which may not admit of analysis
into premiss and conclusion. Thus St. Peter argued in
the case of Cornelius and his friends, " Can any man forbid
water that these should not be baptized, which have re-
ceived the Holy Ghost as well as we ? "
Such is the series of doctrinal truths, which start from
the dogma of our Lord's Divinity, and again from such
texts of Scripture as " Thou art Peter," and which I should.
382 APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH NOTE. [CH. IX.
have introduced here, had I not already used them for a
previous purpose in the Fourth Chapter. I shall confine
myself then for an example to the instance of the develop-
ments which follow on the consideration of sin after
Baptism, a subject which was touched upon in the same
Chapter.
§ 1. Pardons.
It is not necessary here to enlarge "on the benefits
which the primitive Church held to be conveyed to the
soul by means of the Sacrament of Baptism. Its distin-
guishing gift, which is in point to mention, was the
plenary forgiveness of sins past. It was also held that
the Sacrament could not be repeated. The question
immediately followed, how, since there was but " one
Baptism for the remission of sins," the guilt of such sin
was to be removed as was incurred after its administra-
tion. There must be some provision in the revealed system
for so obvious a need. What could be done for those who
had received the one remission of sins, and had sinned
since ? Some who thought upon the subject appear to
have conceived that the Church was empowered to grant
one, and one only, reconciliation after grievous offences.
Three sins seemed to many, at least in the West, to be
irremissible, idolatry, murder, and adultery. But such
a system of Church discipline, however suited to a small
community, and even expedient in a time of persecution,
could not exist in Christianity, as it spread into the orbis
terrarum, and gathered like a net of every kind. A more
indulgent rule gradually gained ground ; yet the Spanish
Church adhered to the ancient even in the fourth century,
and a portion of the African in the third, and in the
remaining portion there was a relaxation only as regards
the crime of incontinence.
SECT. 1. § 2.] PENANCES. 383
2.
Meanwhile a protest was made against the growing
innovation : at the beginning of the third century Mon-
tanus, who was a zealot for the more primitive rule,
shrank from the laxity, as he considered it, of the Asian
Churches ; l as, in a different subject-matter, Jovinian and
Vigilaiitius were offended at the developments in divine
worship in the century which followed. The Montanists
had recourse to the See of Rome, and at first with some
appearance of success. Again, in Africa, where there had
been in the first instance a schism headed by Felicissimus
in favour of a milder discipline than St. Cyprian approved,
a far more formidable stand was soon made in favour of
Antiquity, headed by Novatus, who originally had been
of the party of Felicissimus. This was taken up at Rome
by Novatian, who professed to adhere to the original, or
at least the primitive rule of the Church, viz. that those
who had once fallen from the faith could in no case be
received again.2 The controversy seems to have found the
following issue, — whether the Church had the means of
pardoning sins committed after Baptism, which the Nova-
tians, at least practically, denied. " It is fitting," says
the Novatian Acesius, " to exhort those who have sinned
after Baptism to repentance, but to expect hope of remis-
sion, not from the priests, but from God, who hath power
to forgive sins." 3 The schism spread into the East, and
led to the appointment of a penitentiary priest in the
Catholic Churches. By the end of the third century as
many as four degrees of penance were appointed, through
which offenders had to pass in order to a reconciliation.
§ 2. Penances.
The length and severity of the penance varied with
1 Gieseler, Text- book, vol. i. p. 108.
2 Gieseler, ibid. p. 164. » Socr. Hist. i. 10.
384 APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH NOTE. [CH. IX.
times and places. Sometimes, as we have seen, it lasted,
in the case of grave offences, through life and on to
death, without any reconciliation ; at other times it ended
only in the viaticum; and if, after reconciliation they did
not die, their ordinary penance was still binding on them
either for life or for a certain time. In other cases it
lasted ten, fifteen, or twenty years. But in all cases, from
the first, the Bishop had the power of shortening it, and
of altering the nature and quality of the punishment.
Thus in the instance of the Emperor Theodosius, whom
St. Ambrose shut out from communion for the massacre
at Thessalonica, " according to the mildest rules of ecclesi-
astical discipline, which were established in the fourth
century," says Gibbon, " the crime of homicide was ex-
piated by the penitence of twenty years ; and as it was
impossible, in the period of human life,, to purge the
accumulated guilt of the massacre . . . the murderer
should have been excluded from the holy communion ti1!
the hour of his death." He goes on to say that the public
edification which resulted from the humiliation of so illus-
trious a penitent was a reason for abridging the punish-
ment. " It was sufficient that the Emperor of the
Romans, stripped of the ensigns of royalty,, should appear
in a mournful and suppliant posture, and that, in the
midst of the Church of Milan, he should humbly solicit
with sighs and tears the pardon of his sins." His penance
was shortened to an interval of about eight months. Hence
arose the phrase of a " pcenitentia legitima, plena, etjusta;"
which signifies a penance sufficient, perhaps in length of
time, perhaps in intensity of punishment.
§ 3. Satisfactions.
Here a serious question presented itself to the minds
of Christians, which was now to be wrought out : — Were
SECT. 1. § 3.] SATISFACTIONS. 385
these punishments merely signs of contrition, or in any
sense satisfactions for sin ? If the former, they might be
absolutely remitted at the discretion of the Church, as
soon as true repentance was discovered ; the end had then
been attained, and nothing more was necessary. Thus
St. Chrysostom says in one of his Homilies,4 " I require
not continuance of time, but the correction of the soul.
Show your contrition, show your reformation, and all is
done." Yet, though there might be a reason of the moment
for shortening the penance imposed by the Church, this
does not at all decide the question whether that ecclesias-
tical penance be not part of an expiation made to the
Almighty Judge for the sin ; and supposing this really to
be the case, the question follows, How is the complement
of that satisfaction to be wrought out, which on just
grounds of present expedience has been suspended by the
Church now ?
As to this question, it cannot be doubted that the
Fathers considered penance as not a mere expression of
contrition, but as an act done directly towards God and a
means of averting His anger. " If the sinner spare not
himself, be will be spared by God/' says the writer who
goes under the name of St. Ambrose. " Let him lie in
sackcloth, and by the austerity of his life make amends
for the offence of his past pleasures," says St. Jerome.
" As we have sinned greatly/' says St. Cyprian, " let us
weep greatly ; for a deep wound diligent and long tending
must not be wanting, the repentance must not fall short
of the offence." "Take heed to thyself/' says St. Basil,
" that, in proportion to the fault, thou admit also the
restoration from the remedy." 5 If so, the question fol-
lows which was above contemplated, — if in consequence
of death, or the exercise of the Church's discretion, the
4 Horn. 14, in 2 Cor. fin.
5 Vid. Tertull. Oxf . tr. pp. 374, 5,
C C
386 APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH NOTE. [CH. IX.
"plena pcenitentia" is not accomplished in its ecclesiastical
shape, how and when will the residue be exacted ?
§ 4. Purgatory.
Clement of Alexandria answers this particular question
very distinctly, according to Bishop Kaye, though not in
some other points expressing himself conformably to the
doctrine afterwards received. " Clement," says that
author, " distinguishes between sins committed before
and after baptism : the former are remitted at baptism ;
the latter are purged by discipline. . . . The necessity of
this purifying discipline is such, that if it does not take
place in this life, it must after death, and is then to be
effected by fire, not by a destructive, but a discriminating
fire, pervading the soul which passes through it." 6
There is a celebrated passage in St. Cyprian, on the
subject of the punishment of lapsed Christians, which
certainly seems to express the same doctrine. "St. Cyprian
is arguing in favour of readmitting the lapsed, when
penitent; and his argument seems to be that it does not
follow that we absolve them simply because we simply re-
store them to the Church. He writes this to Antonian :
' It is one thing to stand for pardon, another to arrive at
glory ; one to be sent to prison (missum in carcerem) and
not to go out till the last farthing be paid, another to re-
ceive at once the reward of faith and virtue ; one thing
to be tormented for sin in long pain, and so to be cleansed
and purged a long while in the fire (pur gar i diu igne),
another to be washed from all sin in martyrdom ; one
thing, in short, to wait for the Lord's sentence in the
Day of Judgment, another at once to be crowned by Him/
Some understand this passage to refer to the penitential
discipline of the Church which was imposed on the peni-
6 Clem. ch. 12.
SECT. I. § 4.] PURGATORY. 387
tent ; and, as far as the context goes, certainly no sense
could be more apposite. Yet . . . the words in themselves
seem to go beyond any mere ecclesiastical, though virtu-
ally divine censure ; especially ' mismm in carcerem ' and
* purgari dm igneS "'
2.
The Acts of the Martyrs St. Perpetua and St. Felicitas,
which are prior to St. Cyprian, confirm this interpretation .
In the course of the narrative, St. Perpetua prays for
her brother Dinocrates, who had died at the age of seven ;
and has a vision of a dark place, and next of a pool of
water, which he was not tall enough to reach. She goes
on praying ; and in a second vision the water descended
to him, and he was able to drink, and went to play as
children use. " Then I knew," she says, " that he was
translated from his place of punishment." 8
The prayers in the Eucharistic Service for the faithful
departed, inculcate, at least according to the belief of
the fourth century, the same doctrine, that the sins of
accepted and elect souls, which were not expiated here,
would receive punishment hereafter. Certainly such was
St. Cyril's belief : " I know that many say," he observes,
" what is a soul profited, which departs from this world
either with sins or without sins, if it be commemorated
in the [Eucharistic] Prayer? Now, surely, if when a
king had banished certain who had given him offence,
their connexions should weave a crown and offer it to
him on behalf of those under his vengeance, would he not
grant a respite to their punishments ? In the same way
we, when we offer to Him our supplications for those who
have fallen asleep, though they be sinners, weave no
crown, but offer up Christ, sacrificed for our sins, pro-
7 Tracts for the Times, No. 79, p. 38.
• Ruinart, Mart. p. 96.
C C 2
388 APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH NOTE. [CH. IX.
pitiating our merciful God, both for them and for our-
selves." 9
3.
Thus we see how, as time went on, the doctrine of Pur-
gatory was brought home to the minds of the people as a
portion or form of Penance due for post-baptismal sin.
And thus the apprehension of this doctrine and the practice
of Infant Baptism would grow into general reception toge-
ther. Cardinal Fisher gives another reason for Purgatory
being then developed out of earlier points of faith. He
says, " Faith, whether in Purgatory or in Indulgences,
was not so necessary in the Primitive Church as now.
For then love so burned, that every one was ready to
meet death for Christ. Crimes were rare, and such as
occurred were avenged by the great severity of the
Canons."1
4.
An author, who quotes this passage, analyzes the cir-
cumstances and the reflections which prepared the Chris-
tian mind for the doctrine, when it was first insisted on,
and his remarks with a few corrections may be accepted
here. "Most men," he says, "to our apprehensions, are
too little formed in religious habits either for heaven or
for hell, yet there is no middle state when Christ comes
in judgment. In consequence it is obvious to have re-
course to the interval before His coming, as a time
during which this incompleteness may be remedied ; as
a season, not of changing the spiritual bent and character
of the soul departed, whatever that be, for probation ends
with mortal life, but of developing it in a more determi-
nate form, whether of good or of evil. Again, when the
mind once allows itself to speculate, it will discern in such
9 Mystagog. 5. J [Vid. Via Media, vol. i. p. 72.]
SECT. I. § 4.] PURGATORY. 389
a provision a means, whereby those, who, not without true
faith at bottom, yet have committed great crimes, or those
who have been carried off in youth while still undecided,
or who die after a barren though not an immoral or
scandalous life, may receive such chastisement as may
prepare them for heaven, and render it consistent with
God's justice to admit them thither. Again, the inequality
of the sufferings of Christians in this life, compared one
with another, leads the mind to the same speculations ;
the intense suffering, for instance, which some men
undergo on their death-bed, seeming as if but an anti-
cipation in their case of what comes after death upon
others, who, without greater claim on God's forbearance,
live without chastisement, and die easily. The mind will
inevitably dwell upon such thoughts, unless it has been
taught to subdue them by education or by the fear or
the experience of their dangerousness.
5.
" Various suppositions have, accordingly, been made,
as pure suppositions, as mere specimens of the capabilities
(if one may so speak) of the Divine Dispensation, as
efforts of the mind reaching forward and venturing be-
yond its depth into the abyss of the Divine Counsels. If
one supposition could be hazarded, sufficient to solve the
problem, the existence of ten thousand others is con-
ceivable, unless indeed the resources of God's Providence
are exactly commensurate with man's discernment of them.
Religious men, amid' these searchings of heart, have
naturally gone to Scripture for relief; to see if the in-
spired word anywhere gave them any clue for their
inquiries. And from what was there found, and from
the speculations of reason upon it, various notions have
been hazarded at different times ; for instance, that there is
a certain momentary ordeal to be undergone by all men
390 APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH NOTE. [~CH. IX.
after this life, more or less severe according to their
spiritual state ; or that certain gross sins in good men
will be thus visited, or their lighter failings and habitual
imperfections ; or that the very sight of Divine Perfec-
tion in the invisible world will be in itself a pain, while
it constitutes the purification of the imperfect but believing
soul ; or that, happiness admitting of various degrees of in-
tensity, penitents late in life may sink for ever into a state,
blissful as far as it goes, but more or less approaching to
unconsciousness ; and infants dying after baptism may
be as gems paving the courts of heaven, or as the living
wheels of the Prophet's vision ; while matured Saints may
excel in capacity of bliss, as well as in dignity, the highest
Archangels.
6.
" Now, as to the punishments and satisfactions for sin,
the texts to which the minds of the early Christians seem
to have been principally drawn, and from which they
ventured to argue in behalf of these vague notions, were
these two : ' The fire shall try every man's work/ &c., and
' He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire/
These passages, with which many more were found to
accord, directed their thoughts one way, as making men-
tion of ' fire,' whatever was meant by the word, as the
instrument of trial and purification ; and that, at some
time between the present time and the Judgment, or at
the Judgment.
"As the doctrine, thus suggested by certain striking
texts, grew in popularity and definiteness, and verged to-
wards its present Roman form, it seemed a key to many
others. Great portions of the books of Psalms, Job, and
the Lamentations, which express the feelings of religious
men under suffering, would powerfully recommend it by
the forcible and most affecting and awful meaning which
SECT. I. § 5.] MERITORIOUS WORKS. 391
they received from it. "When this was once suggested ,.
all other meanings would seem tame and inadequate.
" To these may be added various passages from the
Prophets, as that in the beginning of the third chapter*
of Malachi, which speaks of fire as the instrument of
judgment and purification, when Christ comes to visit His
Church.
" Moreover, there were other texts of obscure and inde-
terminate bearing, which seemed on this hypothesis to re-
ceive a profitable meaning ; such as our Lord's words in the
Sermon on the Mount, * Verily, I say unto thee, thou shalt
by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the utter-
most farthing;' and St. John's expression in the Apoca-
lypse, that * no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under
the earth, was able to open the book.' '
7.
When then an answer had to be made to the question,
how is post-baptismal sin to be remitted, there was an
abundance of passages in Scripture to make easy to the
faith of the inquirer the definitive decision of the Church.
§ 5. Meritorious Works.
The doctrine of post-baptismal sin, especially when
realized in the doctrine of Purgatory, leads the inquirer te
fresh developments beyond itself. Its effect is to convert
a Scripture statement, which might seem only of temporary
application, into a universal and perpetual truth. When
St. Paul and St. Barnabas would " confirm the souls of
the disciples," they taught them " that we must through
much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." It is
obvious what very practical results would follow on such
an announcement, in the instance of those who simply
* [Via Media, vol. i. pp. 174—177.]
392 APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH NOTE. [cH. IX.
accepted the Apostolic decision ; and in like manner a
conviction that sin must have its punishment, here or
hereafter, and that we all must suffer, how overpowering
will be its effect, what a new light does it cast on the his-
tory of the soul, what a change does it make in our
judgment of the external world, what a reversal of our
natural wishes and aims for the future ! Is a doctrine
conceivable which would so elevate the mind above this
present state, and teach it so successfully to dare difficult
things, and to be reckless of danger and pain ? He who
believes that suffer he must, and that delayed punishment
may be the greater, will be above the world, will admire
nothing, fear nothing, desire nothing. He has within
his breast a source of greatness, self-denial, heroism. This
is the secret spring of strenuous efforts and persevering
toil, of the sacrifice of fortune, friends, ease, reputation,
happiness. There is, it is true, a higher class of motives
which will be felt by the Saint ; who will do from love
what all Christians, who act acceptably, do from faith.
And, moreover, the ordinary measures of charity which
Christians possess, suffice for securing such respectable
attention to religious duties as the routine necessities of
the Church require. But if we would raise an army of
devoted men to resist the world, to oppose sin and error,
to relieve misery, or to propagate the truth, we must be
provided with motives which keenly affect the many.
Christian love is too rare a gift, philanthropy is too weak a
material, for the occasion. Nor is there an influence to be
found to suit our purpose, besides this solemn conviction,
which arises out of the very rudiments of Christian theo-
logy, and is taught by its most ancient masters, — this
sense of the awfulness of post-baptismal sin. It is in vain
to look out for missionaries for China or Africa, or evange-
lists for our great towns, or Christian attendants on the sick,
or teachers of the ignorant, on such a scale of numbers as the
SECT. I. § 6.] THE MONASTIC RULE. 393
need requires, without the doctrine of Purgatory. For
thus the sins of youth are turned to account by the profit-
able penance of manhood ; and terrors, which the philo-
sopher scorns in the individual, become the benefactors
and earn the gratitude of nations.
§ 67 The Monastic Euk.
But there is one form of Penance which has been
more prevalent and uniform than any other, out of which
the forms just noticed have grown, or on which they have
been engrafted, — the Monastic Rule. In the first ages, the
doctrine of the punishments of sin, whether in this world
or in the next, was little called for. The rigid discipline
of the infant Church was the preventive of greater offences,
and its persecutions the penance of their commission ; but
when the Canons were relaxed and confessorship ceased,
then some substitute was needed, and such was Monachism,
being at once a sort of continuation of primeval innocence,
and a school of self-chastisement. And, as it is a great
principle in economical and political science that every-
thing should be turned to account, and there should be no
waste, so, in the instance of Christianity, the penitential
observances of individuals, which were necessarily on a
large scale as its professors increased, took the form of
works, whether for the defence of the Church, or the
spiritual and temporal good of mankind.
2.
In no aspect of the Divine system do we see more striking
developments than in the successive fortunes of Monachism.
Little did the youth Antony foresee, when he set off to
fight the evil one in the wilderness, what a sublime and
various history he was opening, a history which had its
first developments even in his own lifetime. He was
394 APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH NOTE. [CH. IX.
himself a hermit in the desert ; but when others followed
his example, he was obliged to give them guidance, and
thus he found himself, by degrees, at the head of a large
family of solitaries, five thousand of whom were scattered
in the district of JSTitria alone. He lived to see a second
stage in the development ; the huts in which they lived
were brought together, sometimes round a church, and a
sort of subordinate community, or college, formed among
certain individuals of their number. St. Pachomius was
the first who imposed a general rule of discipline upon the
brethren, gave them a common dress, and set before them
the objects to which the religious life was dedicated.
Manual labour, study, devotion, bodily mortification, were
now their peculiarities ; and the institution, thus defined,
spread and established itself through Eastern and Western
Christendom.
The penitential character of Monachism is not prominent
in St. Antony, though it is distinctty noticed by Pliny in
his description of the Essenes of the Dead Sea, who
anticipated the monastic life at the rise of Christianity.
In St. Basil, however, it becomes a distinguishing feature ;
— so much so that the monastic profession was made a dis-
qualification for the pastoral office,3 and in theory involved
an absolute separation from mankind ; though in St. Basil's,
as well as St. Antony's disciples, it performed the office of
resisting heresy.
Next, the monasteries, which in their ecclesiastical
capacity had been at first separate churches under a Pres-
byter or Abbot, became schools for the education of the
clergy.4
3.
Centuries passed, and after many extravagant shapes of
the institution, and much wildness and insubordination in
3 Gieseler, vol. ii. p. 288. 4 Ibid. p. 279.
SECT. I. § 6.] THE MONASTIC RULE. 395
its members, a new development took place under St.
Benedict. Revising and digesting the provisions of St.
Antony, St. Pachomius, and St. Basil, he bound together
his monks by a perpetual vow, brought them into the
cloister, united the separate convents into one Order,5 and
added objects of an ecclesiastical and civil nature to
that of personal edification. Of these objects, agriculture
seemed to St. Benedict himself of first importance ; but in
a very short time it was superseded by study and educa-
tion, and the monasteries of the following centuries
became the schools and libraries, and the monks the chroni-
clers and copyists, of a dark period. Centuries later, the
Benedictine Order was divided into separate Congrega-
tions, and propagated in separate monastic bodies. The
Congregation of Cluni was the most celebrated of the
former ; and of the latter, the hermit order of the Camal-
doli and the agricultural Cistercians.
4.
Both a unity and an originality are observable in the
successive phases under which Monachism has shown
itself ; while its developments bring it more and more into
the ecclesiastical system, and subordinate it to the govern-
ing power, they are true to their first idea, and spring
fresh and fresh from the parent stock, which from time
immemorial had thriven in Syria and Egypt. The sheep-
skin and desert of St. Antony did but revive " the mantle"
and the mountain of the first Carmelite, and St. Basil's
penitential exercises had already been practised by the
Therapeutse. In like manner the Congregational principle,
which is ascribed to St. Benedict, had been anticipated
5 Or rather his successors, as St. Benedict of Anian, were the founders
of the Order ; but minute accuracy on these points is unnecessary in a
mere sketch of the history.
6 /rrjAon-ojs, 2 Kings ii. Sept. Vid. also, "They wandered ahout in sheep-
skins and goatskins" (Heb. xi. 37).
396 APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH KOTE. [CH. IX.
by St. Antony and St. Pachomius ; and after centuries of
disorder, another function of early Monachism, for which
there had been little call for centuries, the defence of
Catholic truth, was exercised with singular success by the
rival orders of Dominicans and Franciscans.
St. Benedict had come as if to preserve a principle of
civilization, and a refuge for learning, at a time when the
old framework of society was falling, and new political
creations were taking their place. And when the young
intellect within them began to stir, and a change of another
kind discovered itself, then appeared St. Francis and St.
Dominic to teach and chastise it ; and in proportion as
Monachism assumed this public office, so did the principle
of penance, which had been the chief characteristic of its
earlier forms, hold a less prominent place. The Tertiaries
indeed, or members of the third order of St. Francis and
St. Dominic, were penitents ; but the friar himself, instead
of a penitent, was made a priest, and was allowed to quit
cloister. Nay, they assumed the character of what maybe
called an Ecumenical Order, as being supported by begging,
not by endowments, and being under the jurisdiction, not
of the local Bishop, but of the Holy See. The Dominicans
too came forward especially as a learned body, and as en-
trusted with the office of preaching, at a time when the
mind of Europe seemed to be developing into infidelity.
They filled the chairs at the Universities, while the
strength of the Franciscans lay among the lower orders.
5.
At length, in the last era of ecclesiastical revolution,
another principle of early Monachism, which had been
but partially developed, was brought out into singular
prominence in the history of the Jesuits. "Obedience,"
said an ancient abbot, " is a monk's service, with which he
shall be heard in prayer, and shall stand with confidence
SECT. I. § 6.] THE MONASTIC RULE. 397
by the Crucified, for so the Lord came to the cross, being
made obedient even unto death ;" " but it was reserved for
modern times to furnish the perfect illustration of this
virtue, and to receive the full blessing which follows it.
The great Society, which bears no earthly name, still
more secular in its organization, and still more simply
dependent on the See of St. Peter, has been still more
distinguished than any Order before it for the rule of
obedience, while it has compensated the danger of its free
intercourse with the world by its scientific adherence to
devotional exercises. The hermitage, the cloister, the
inquisitor, and the friar were suited to other states of
society ; with the Jesuits, as well as with the religious
Communities, which are their juniors, usefulness, secular
and religious, literature, education, the confessional,
preaching, the oversight of the poor, missions, the care of
the sick, have been chief objects of attention ; great cities
have been the scene of operation : bodily austerities and
the ceremonial of devotion have been made of but secon-
dary importance. Yet it may fairly be questioned,
whether, in an intellectual age, when freedom both of
thought and of action is so dearly prized, a greater
penance can be devised for the soldier of Christ than the
absolute surrender of judgment and will to the command
of another.
7 Rosweyde. V. P. p. 618.
CHAPTER X.
APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE OF A TRUE
DEVELOPMENT.
ANTICIPATION OF ITS FUTURE,
IT has been set down above as a fifth argument in favour
of the fidelity of developments, ethical or political, if
the doctrine from which they have proceeded has, in any
early stage of its history, given indications of those
opinions and practices in which it has ended. Supposing
then the so-called Catholic doctrines and practices are true
and legitimate developments, and not corruptions, we may
expect from the force of logic to find instances of them in
the first centuries. And this I conceive to be the case :
the records indeed of those times are scanty, and we have
little means of determining what daily Christian life then
was : we know little of the thoughts, and the prayers, and
the meditations, and the discourses of the early disciples of
Christ, at a time when these professed developments were
not recognized and duly located in the theological system ;
yet it appears, even from what remains, that the atmo-
sphere of the Church was, as it were, charged with them
from the first, and delivered itself of them from time to
time, in this way or that, in various places and persons, as
occasion elicited them, testifying the presence of a vast
body of thought within it, which one day would take shape
and pooition.
SECT. !.§!.] RESURRECTION AND RELICS. 399
§ 1. Resurrection and Relics.
As a chief specimen of what I am pointing out, I will
direct attention to a characteristic principle of Christianity,
whether in the East or in the West, which is at present
both a special stumbling-block and a subject of scoffing
with Protestants and free-thinkers of every shade and
colour : I mean the devotions which both Greeks and Latins
show towards bones, blood, the heart, the hair, bits of
clothes, scapulars, cords, medals, beads, and the like, and the
miraculous powers which they often ascribe to them. Now,
the principle from which these beliefs and usages proceed
is the doctrine that Matter is susceptible of grace, or capa-
ble of a union with a Divine Presence and influence. This
principle, as we shall see, was in the first age both energe-
tically manifested and variously developed ; and that
chiefly in consequence of the diametrically opposite
doctrine of the schools and the religions of the day. And
thus its exhibition in that primitive time becomes also an
instance of a statement often made in controversy, that
the profession and the developments of a doctrine are
according to the emergency of the time, and that silence
at a certain period implies, not that it was not then held,
but that it was not questioned.
2.
Christianity began by considering Matter as a creature
of God, and in itself " very good." It taught that Matter,
as well as Spirit, had become corrupt, in the instance of
Adam ; and it contemplated its recovery. It taught that
the Highest had taken a portion of that corrupt mass upon
Himself, in order to its sanctification. It taught that, as a
firstfruits of His purpose, He had purified from all sin that
very portion of it which He took into His Eternal Person,
and thereunto had taken it from a Virgin Womb, which
400 APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE. [CH. X.
He had filled with the abundance of His Spirit. More-
over, it taught that during His earthly sojourn He had
been subject to the natural infirmities of man, and had
suffered from those ills to which flesh is heir. It taught
that the Highest had in that flesh died on the Cross, and
that His blood had an expiatory power; moreover, that
He had risen again in that flesh, and had carried that
flesh with Him into heaven, and that from that flesh,
glorified and deified in Him, He never would be divided.
As a first consequence of these awful doctrines comes that
of the resurrection of the bodies of His Saints, and of their
future glorification with Him ; next, that of the sanctity of
relics ; further, that of the merit of Virginity ; and, lastly,
that of the prerogatives of Mary, Mother of God. All
these doctrines are more or less developed in the Ante-
nicene period, though in very various degrees, from the
nature of the case.
3.
And they were all objects of offence or of scorn to phi-
losophers, priests, or populace of the day. With varieties
of opinions which need not be mentioned, it was a funda-
mental doctrine in the schools,x whether Greek or Oriental,
that Matter was essentially evil. It had not been created
by the Supreme God ; it was in eternal enmity with Him ;
it was the source of all pollution ; and it was irreclaimable.
Such was the doctrine of Platonist, Gnostic, and Manichee :
— whereas then St. John had laid it down that "every
spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is the spirit of Antichrist:" the Gnostics obstinately
denied the Incarnation, and held that Christ was but a
phantom, or had come on the man Jesus at his baptism,
and left him at his passion. The one great topic of preach-
ing with Apostles and Evangelists was the Resurrection of
Christ and of all mankind after Him ; but when the phi-
SECT. !.§!.] RESURRECTION AND RELICS. ' 401
losophers of Athens heard St. Paul, " some mocked/' and
others contemptuously put aside the doctrine. The birth
from a Virgin implied, not only that the body was not
intrinsically evil, but that one state of it was holier than
another, and St. Paul explained that, while marriage was
good, celibacy was better ; but the Gnostics, holding the
utter malignity of Matter, one and all condemned marriage
as sinful, and, whether they observed continence or not,
or abstained from eating flesh or not, maintained that all
functions of our animal nature were evil and abominable.
4.
" Perish the thought," says Manes, " that our Lord
Jesus Christ should have descended through the womb
of a woman. " "He descended/' says Marcion, "but
without touching her or taking aught from her."
" Through her, not of her/' said another. " It is absurd
to assert/' says a disciple of Bardesanes, " that this flesh in
which we are imprisoned shall rise again, for it is well
called a burden, a tomb, and a chain." " They execrate
the funeral-pile," says Csecilius, speaking of Christians, " as
if bodies, though withdrawn from the flames, did not all
resolve into dust by years, whether beasts tear, or sea
swallows, or earth covers, or flame wastes." According to
the old Paganism, both the educated and vulgar held
corpses and sepulchres in aversion. They quickly rid
themselves of the remains even of their friends, thinking
their presence a pollution, and felt the same terror even of
burying-places which assails the ignorant and superstitious
now. It is recorded of Hannibal that, on his return to
the African coast from Italy, he changed his landing-place
to avoid a ruined sepulchre. " May the god who passes
between heaven and hell," says Apuleius in his Apology,
" present to thy eyes, 0 Emilian, all that haunts the night,
all that alarms in burying-places, all that terrifies in
D d
402 APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE. [CH. X.
tombs." George of Cappadocia could not direct a more
bitter taunt against the Alexandrian Pagans than to call
the temple of Serapis a sepulchre. The case had been the
same even among the Jews ; the Rabbins taught, that
even the corpses of holy men " did but serve to diffuse in-
fection and defilement." " When deaths were Judaical,"
says the writer who goes under the name of St. Basil,
" corpses were an abomination ; when death is for Christ,
the relics of Saints are precious. It was anciently said to
the Priests and the Nazarites, ' If any one shall touch a
corpse, he shall be unclean till evening, and he shall wash his
garment ;' now, on the contrary, if any one shall touch
a Martyr's bones, by reason of the grace dwelling in the
body, he receives some participation of his sanctity." *
JNay, Christianity taught a reverence for the bodies even
of heathen. The care of the dead is one of the praises
which, as we have seen above, is extorted in their favour
from the Emperor Julian ; and it was exemplified during
the mortality which spread through the Roman world in
the time of St. Cyprian. " They did good," says Pontius
of the Christians of Carthage, " in the profusion of exube-
rant works to all, and not only to the household of faith.
They did somewhat more than is recorded of the incom-
parable benevolence of Tobias. The slain of the king and
the outcasts, whom Tobias gathered together, were of his
own kin only." 2
5.
Far more of course than such general reverence was the
honour that they showed to the bodies of the Saints. They
ascribed virtue to their martyred tabernacles, and trea-
1 Act. Arch. p. 85. Athan. c. Apoll. ii. 3. — Adam. Dial. iii. init. Minnc.
Dial. 11. Apul. Apol. p. 535. Kortholt. Cal. p. 63. Calmet, Diet. t. 2,
p. 736. Basil in Ps. 115, 4.
* Vit. S. Cypr. 10.
SECT. !.§!.] RESURRECTION AND RELICS. 403
snred, as something supernatural, their blood, their ashes,
and their bones. When St. Cyprian was beheaded, his
brethren brought napkins to soak up his blood. " Only
the harder portion of the holy relics remained," say the
Acts of St. Ignatius, who was exposed to the beasts in the
amphitheatre, " which were conveyed to Antioch, and
deposited in linen, bequeathed, by the grace that was in the
Martyr, to that holy Church as a priceless treasure/' The
Jews attempted to deprive the brethren of St. Polycarp's
body, " lest, leaving the Crucified, they begin to worship
him," say his Acts ; " ignorant," they continue, " that we
can never leave Christ;" and they add, "We, having
taken up his bones which were more costly than precious
stones, and refined more than gold, deposited them where
was fitting ; and there when we meet together, as we can,
the Lord will grant us to celebrate with joy and gladness
the birthday of his martyrdom." On one occasion in
Palestine, the Imperial authorities disinterred the bodies
and cast them into the sea, "lest, as their opinion went/-
says Eusebius, " there should be those who in their sepul-
chres and monuments might think them gods, and treat
them with divine worship."
- Julian, who had been a Christian, and knew the Chris-
tian history more intimately than a mere infidel would
know it, traces the superstition, as he considers it, to the
very lifetime of St. John, that is, as early as there were
Martyrs to honour ; makes their observance contempo-
raneous with the worship paid to our Lord, and equally
distinct and formal ; and", moreover, declares that first it
was secret, which for various reasons it was likely to have
been. "Neither Paul," he says, •" nor Matthew, nor Luke,
nor Mark, dared to call Jesus God ; but honest John,
having perceived that a great multitude had been caught
by this disease in many of the Greek and Italian cities,
and hearing, I suppose, that the monuments of Peter and
D d 2
404 APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH ROTE. [cH. X.
Paul were, secretly indeed, but still hearing that they were
honoured, first dared to say it." " Who can feel worthy
abomination?" he says elsewhere; "you have filled all
places with tombs and monuments, though it has been
nowhere told you to tumble down at tombs or to honour
them If Jesus said that they were full of unclean-
ness, why do ye invoke God at them?" The tone of
Faustus the Manichsean is the same. " Ye have turned/7
he says to St. Augustine, " the idols " of the heathen
" into your Martyrs, whom ye honour (colitis) with simi-
lar prayers («?<?&*). "*
6.
It is remarkable that the attention of both Christians
and their opponents turned from the relics of the Martyrs
to their persons. Basilides at least, who was founder of
one of the most impious Gnostic sects, spoke of them with
disrespect ; he considered that their sufferings were the
penalty of secret sins or evil desires, or transgressions com-
mitted in another body, and a sign of divine favour only
because they were allowed to connect them with the cause
of Christ.4 On the other hand, it was the doctrine of the
Church that Martyrdom was meritorious, that it had a
certain supernatural efficacy in it, and that the blood of
the Saints received from the grace of the One Redeemer a
certain expiatory power. Martyrdom stood in the place of
Baptism, where the Sacrament had not been administered.
It exempted the soul from all preparatory waiting, and
gained its immediate admittance into glory. "All
crimes are pardoned for the sake of this work," says
Tertullian,
And in proportion to the near approach of the martyrs
8 Act. Procons. 5. Ruinart, Act. Mart. pp. 22, 44. Euseb. Hist. viii. 6.
Julian, ap. Cyr. pp. 327, 335. August, c. Faust, xx. 4.
4 Clein. Strom, iv. 12.
SECT. I. § 2.] THE VIRGIN LIFE. 405
to their Almighty Judge, was their high dignity and
power. St. Dionysius speaks of their reigning with
Christ ; Origen even conjectures that " as we are redeemed
by the precious blood of Jesus, so some are redeemed by
the precious blood of the Martyrs." St. Cyprian seems
to explain his meaning when he says, " We believe that
the merits of Martyrs and works of the just avail much
with the Judge," that is, for those who were lapsed,
" when, after the end of this age and the world, Christ's
people shall stand before His judgment-seat." Accordingly
they were considered to intercede for the Church militant
in their state of glory, and for individuals whom they had
known. St. Potamiaena of Alexandria, in the first years
of the third century, when taken out for execution, pro-
mised to obtain after her departure the salvation of the
officer who led her out ; and did appear to him, according
to Eusebius, on the third day, and prophesied his own
speedy martyrdom. And St. Theodosia in. Palestine came
to certain confessors who were in bonds, "to request them,'*
as Eusebius tells us, " to remember her when they came to
the Lord's Presence." Tertullian, when a Montanist,
betrays the existence of the doctrine in the Catholic body
by protesting against it.5
§ 2. The Virgin Life.
Next to the prerogatives of bodily suffering or Martyrdom
came, in the estimation of the early Church, the preroga-
tives of bodily, as well as moral, purity or Virginity ;
another form of the general principle which I am here
illustrating. " The first reward," says St. Cyprian to the
Virgins, " is for the Martyrs an hundred-fold ; the second,
sixty-fold, is for yourselves." 6 Their state and its merit is
recognized by a consensus of the Ante-nicene writers ; of
8 Tertull. Apol. fin. Euseb. Hist. vi. 42. Grig, ad Martyr. 50. Ruinart,
Act. Mart. pp. 122, 323. 6 De Hab. Virg. 12.
406 APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE. [CH. X.
whom Athenagoras distinctly connects Virginity with the
privilege of divine communion : " You will find many of
our people/' he says to the Emperor Marcus, " both men
and women, grown old in their single state, in hope
thereby of a closer union with God." 7
2.
Among the numerous authorities which might be cited,
I will confine myself to a work, elaborate in itself, and im-
portant from its author. St. Methodius was a Bishop and
Martyr of the latter years of the Ante-nicene period, and
is celebrated as the most variously endowed divine of his
day. His learning, elegance in composition, and eloquence,
are all commemorated.8 The work in question, the Con-
vivium Virginum, is a conference in which ten Virgins
successively take part, in praise of the state of life to
which they have themselves been specially called. I do
not wish to deny that there are portions of it which
strangely grate upon the feelings of an age, which is
formed on principles of which marriage is the centre.
But here we are concerned with its doctrine. Of the
speakers in this Colloquy, three at least are real persons
prior to St. Methodius's time ; of these Thecla, whom
tradition associates with St. Paul, is one, and Marcella,
who in the Homan Breviary is considered to be St. Martha's
servant, and who is said to have been the woman who
exclaimed, " Blessed is the womb that bare Thee," &c., is
described as a still older servant of Christ. The latter
opens the discourse, and her subject is the gradual develop-
ment of the doctrine of Virginity in the Divine Dispensa-
tions ; Theophila, who follows, enlarges on the sanctity of
Matrimony, with which the special glory of the higher
state does not interfere ; Thalia discourses on the mystical
union which exists between Christ and His Church, and on
7 Athenag. Leg. 33. * Lumper, Hist. t. 13, p. 439.
SECT. I. § 2.] THE VIRGIN LIFE. 407
the seventh chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians ;
Theopatra on the merit of Virginity; Thallusa exhorts
to a watchful guardianship of the gift ; Agatha shows the
necessity of other virtues and good works, in order to the
real praise of their peculiar profession ; Procilla extols
Virginity as the special instrument of becoming a spouse of
Christ ; Thecla treats of it as the great combatant in the
warfare between heaven and hell, good and evil ; and
Domnina allegorizes Jothan's parable in Judges ix. Virtue,
who has been introduced as the principal personage in
the representation from the first, closes the discussion
with an exhortation to inward purity, and they answer
her by an hymn to our Lord as the Spouse of His
Saints.
3.
It is observable that St. Methodius plainly speaks of the
profession of Virginity as a vow. " I will explain," says
one of his speakers, " how we are dedicated to the Lord.
What is enacted in the Book of Numbers, ' to vow a vow
mightily/ shows what I am insisting on at great length,
that Chastity is a mighty vow beyond all vows." 9 This
language is not peculiar to St. Methodius among the Ante-
nicene Fathers. " Let such as promise Virginity and
break their profession be ranked among digamists," says
the Council of Ancyra in the beginning of the fourth
century. Tertullian speaks of being " married to Christ,"
and marriage implies a vow ; he proceeds, " to Him thou
hast pledged (sponsasti) thy ripeness of age ;" and before
he had expressly spoken of the continents votum. Origen
speaks of " devoting one's body to God " in chastity ; and
St. Cyprian " of Christ's Virgin, dedicated to Him and
destined for His sanctity," and elsewhere of "members
dedicated to Christ, and for ever devoted by virtuous
8 Gallaud. t. 3, p. 700.
408 APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE. [CH. X.-
chastity to the praise of continence ;" and Eusebius of
those " who had consecrated themselves body and soul to a
pure and all- holy life." '
§ 3. Cultus of Saints and Angels.
The Spanish Church supplies us with an anticipation of
the later devotions to Saints and Angels. The Canons are
extant of a Council of Illiberis, held shortly before the
Council of Mcsea, and representative of course of the doc-
trine of the third century. Among these occurs the fol-
lowing : " It is decreed, that pictures ought not to be in
church, lest what is worshipped or adored be painted on
the walls/'5 Now these words are commonly taken to be
decisive against the use of pictures in the Spanish Church
at that era. Let us grant it ; let us grant that the use oi
all pictures is forbidden, pictures not only of our Lord, and
sacred emblems, as of the Lamb and the Dove, but pictures
of Angels and Saints also. It is not fair to restrict the words,
nor are controversialists found desirous of doing so ; they
take them to include the images of the Saints. " For keep-
ing of pictures out of the Church, the Canon of the Eliberine
or Illiberitine Council, held in Spain, about the time of
Constantino the Great, is most plain/' 8 says Ussher : he is
speaking of " the representations of God and of Christ, and
of Angels and of Saints."4 " The Council of Eliberis is very
ancient, and of great fame/' says Taylor, " in which it is
expressly forbidden that what is worshipped should be
depicted on the walls, and that therefore pictures ought
1 Routh, Eeliqu. t. 3, p. 414. Tertull. de Virg. Vel. 16 and 11. Orig.
in Num. Horn. 24, 2. Cyprian. Ep. 4, p. 8, ed. Fell. Ep. 62, p. 147.
Euseb. V. Const, iv. 26.
2 Placuit pictures in ecclesia- esse non debere, ne, quod colitur aut ado-
ratur, in parietibus depingatur. Can. 36.
3 Answ. to a Jes. 10, p. 437.
* p. 430. The " colitur aut adoratur " marks a difference of worship.
SECT. I. § 3.] CULTUS OF SAINTS AND ANGELS. 409
not to be in churches."3 He too is speaking of the Saints.
I repeat, let us grant this freely. This inference then
seems to be undeniable, that the Spanish Church considered
the Saints to be in the number of objects either of " wor-
ship or adoration ;" for it is of such objects that the
representations are forbidden. The very drift of the pro-
hibition is this, — lest what is in itself an object of worship
(quod colitur) should be worshipped in painting ; unless
then Saints and Angels were objects of worship, their
pictures would have been allowed.
2.
This mention of Angels leads me to a memorable
passage about the honour due to them in Justin
Martyr.
St. Justin, after " answering the charge of Atheism,"
as Dr. Burton says, "which was brought against Christians
of his day, and observing that they were punished for not
worshipping evil demons which were not really gods,"
continues, " But Him, (God,) and the Son who came from.
Him, and taught us these things, and the host of the
other good Angels which attend upon and resemble Him,
and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, paying
them a reasonable and true honour, and not refusing to
deliver to any one else, who wishes to be taught, what we
ourselves have learned.""6
A more express testimony to the cultus Angelorum can-
5 Dissuasive, i. 1, 8.
6 'E/ceu/oj/ Tf, KOI rbv Trap' avrov vibv t\Q6vra KOI 5t5d|ayra ^/tos ravra,
y ruv &\\(ov GTro[j.ev(i}v Kal e£o/j.oio
re rb irpotyTjTiicbv ff€$6(j.tda Ka
al iravrl ^SouAojuevy p.a.Qfiv, u>s
— Apol. i. 6. The passage is parallel to the Prayer in the Breviary :
" Sacrosanctse et individual Trinitati, Crucifixi Domini nostri Jesu Christ!
humanitati, beatissimae et gloriosissimse semperque Virginis Maria faecundse
integritati, et omnium Sanctorum universitati, sit sempiterna laus, honor,
virtus, et gloria ah omni creatura," &c.
410 APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE. [CH. X.
not be required ; nor is it unnatural in the connexion in
which it occurs, considering St. Justin has been speaking
of the heathen worship of demons, and therefore would be
led without effort to mention, not only the incommunicable
adoration paid to the One God, who " will not give His
glory to another/' but such inferior honour as may be paid
to creatures, without sin on the side whether of giver or
receiver. Nor is the construction of the original Greek
harsher than is found in other authors ; nor need it sur-
prise us in one whose style is not accurate, that two words
should be used in combination to express worship, and that
one should include Angels, and that the other should not.
3.
The following is Dr. Burton's account of the passage :
" Scultetus, a Protestant divine of Heidelberg, in his
Medulla Theologice Patrum, which appeared in 1605, gave
a totally different meaning to the passage ; and instead of
connecting ' the host ' with * we worship,' connected it with
' taught us.' The words would then be rendered thus :
' But Him, and the Son who came from Him, who also
gave us instructions concerning these things, and concern-
ing the host of the other good angels we worship/ &c.
This interpretation is adopted and defended at some length
by Bishop Bull, and by Stephen Le Moyne ; and even the
Benedictine Le Nourry supposed Justin to mean that
Christ had taught us not to worship the bad angels, as
well as the existence of good angels. Grabe, in his edition
of ' Justin's Apology/ which was printed in 1703, adopted
another interpretation, which had been before proposed by
Le Moyne and by Cave. This also connects ' the host y
with ' taught' and would require us to render the passage
thus : ' . . . and the Son who came from Him, who also
taught these things to us, and to the host of the other
Angels/ &c. It might be thought that Langus, who
SECT. I. § 3.] CULTUS OF SAINTS AND ANGELS. 411
published a Latin translation of Justin in 1565, meant to
adopt one of these interpretations, or at least to connect
4 host ' with ' taught these tilings.9 Both of them certainly
are ingenious, and are not perhaps opposed to the literal
construction of the Greek words ; but I cannot say that
they are satisfactory, or that I am surprised at Roman
Catholic writers describing them as forced and violent
attempts to evade a difficulty. If the words enclosed in
brackets were removed, the whole passage would certainly
contain a strong argument in favour of the Trinity ; but
as they now stand, Roman Catholic writers will naturally
quote them as supporting the worship of Angels.
" There is, however, this difficulty in such a construction
of the passage : it proves too much. By coupling the
Angels with the three persons of the Trinity, as objects of
religious adoration, it seems to go beyond even what
Roman Catholics themselves would maintain concerning
the worship of Angels. Their well-known distinction
between latria and dulia would be entirely confounded ;
and the difficulty felt by the Benedictine editor appears to
have been as great, as his attempt to explain it is unsuc-
cessful, when he wrote as follows : * Our adversaries in vain
object the twofold expression, we worship and adore. For
the former is applied to Angels themselves, regard being
had to the distinction between the creature and the
Creator ; the latter by no means necessarily includes the
Angels/ This sentence requires concessions, which no
opponent could be expected to make ; and if one of the
two terms, we worship and adore, may be applied to Angels,
it is unreasonable to contend that the other must not also.
Perhaps, however, the passage may be explained so as to
admit a distinction of this kind. The interpretations of
Scultetus and Grabe have not found many advocates ; and
upon the whole I should be inclined to conclude, that the
clause, which relates to the Angels, is connected particu-
412 APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE. [CH. X.
larly with the words, ' paying them a reasonable and true
honour/"7
Two violent alterations, of the text have also been pro-
posed : one to transfer the clause which creates the
difficulty, after the words paying them honour ; the other
to substitute a-rparrjyov (commander) for drparbv (host).
4.
Presently Dr. Burton continues : — " Justin, as I ob-
served, is defending the Christians from the charge of
Atheism ; and after saying that the gods, whom they
refused to worship, were no gods, but evil demons, he points
out what were ,the Beings who were worshipped by the
Christians. He names the frue God, :who is the source of
all virtue ; the Son, who proceeded from Him ; the good
and ministering spirits ; and the Holy Ghost. To these
Beings, he says, we pay all the worship, adoration, and
honour, which is due to each, of them ; i. e. worship where
worship is due, honour where honour is due. The
Christians were accused of worshipping no gods, that is,
of acknowledging no superior beings at all. Justin shows
that so far was this from being true, that they acknow-
ledged more than one order of spiritual Beings j they offered
divine worship to the true God, and they also believed in the
existence of good spirits, which were entitled to honour and
respect. If the reader will view the passage as a whole,
he will perhaps see that there is nothing violent in thus
restricting the words worship and adore, and honouring, to
certain parts of it respectively. It may seem strange that
Justin should mention the ministering spirits before the
Holy Ghost : but this is a difficulty which presses upon the
Roman Catholics as much as upon ourselves ; and we may
perhaps adopt the explanation of the Bishop of Lincoln,8
who says, ' I have sometimes thought that in this passage,
7 Test. Trin. pp. 16, 17, 18. 8 Dr. Kaye. .
SECT. I. § 4.] OFFICE OF ST. MARY. 413
11 and the host" is equivalent to "with the host" and that
Justin had in his mind the glorified state of Christ, when He
should come' to judge the world, surrounded by the host of
heaven.-' The bishop then brings several passages from
Justin, where the Son of God is spoken of as attended by
a company of Angels ; and if this idea was then in Justin's
mind, it might account for his naming the ministering
spirits immediately after the Son of God, rather than after
the Holy Ghost, which would have been the natural and
proper order.'''9
This passage of 'St. Justin is the more remarkable,
because it cannot be denied that there was a worship of
the Angels at that day, of wjiich St. Paul speaks, which
was Jewish and Gnostic, and utterly reprobated by the
Church.
§ 4. Office of St. Mary.
The Special prerogatives of St, Mary, the Virgo Virgi-
nvtm, are intimately involved in the, doctrine of the In-
carnation itself, with which these remarks began, and have
already been dwelt upon above. As is well known, they
were not fully recognized in the Catholic ritual till a late
date, but they were not a new thing in the Church, or
strange to her earlier teachers. St. Justin, St. Irenaeus,
and others, had distinctly laid it down, that she not only
had an office, but bore a part, and was a voluntary agent,
in -the actual process of redemption, as Eve had been in-
strumental and responsible in Adam's fall. They taught
that, as the first woman might have foiled the Tempter
and did not, so, if Mary had been disobedient or unbeliev-
ing on Gabriel's message, the Divine Economy would have
been frustrated. And certainly the parallel between " the
Mother of all living " and the Mother of the Redeemer
may be gathered from a comparison- of the first chapters
9 p. 19-21.
414 APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE. [CH. X.
of Scripture with the last. It was noticed in a former
place, that the only passage where the serpent is directly
identified with the evil spirit occurs in the twelfth chapter
of Revelations ; now it is observable that the recognition,
when made, is found in the course of a vision of a " woman
clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet :" thus
two women are brought into contrast with each other. More-
over, as it is said in the Apocalypse, ' ' The dragon was wroth
with the woman, and went about to make war with the rem-
nant of her seed/* so is it prophesied in Genesis, " I will put
enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her Seed. He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise
His heel." Also the enmity was to exist, not only between
the Serpent and the Seed of the woman, but between the
serpent and the woman herself ; and here too there is a
correspondence in the Apocalyptic vision. If then there
is reason for thinking that this mystery at the close of
the Scripture record answers to the mystery in the begin-
ning of it, and that " the Woman " mentioned in both
passages is one and the same, then she can be none other
than St. Mary, thus introduced prophetically to our notice
immediately on the transgression of Eve.
2.
Here, however, we are not so much concerned to inter-
pret Scripture as to examine the Fathers. Thus St. Justin
says, " Eve, being a virgin and incorrupt, having conceived
the word from the Serpent, bore disobedience and death ;
but Mary the Virgin, receiving faith and joy, when
Gabriel the Angel evangelized her, answered, ' Be it unto
me according to thy word.' " And Tertullian says that,
whereas Eve believed the Serpent, and Mary believed
Gabriel, " the fault of Eve in believing, Mary by be-
lieving hath blotted out." 2 St. Irena3us speaks jnore
1 Trypb. 100. - Resurr. Cam. 17.
SECT. I. § 4.] OFFICE OF ST. MARY. 415
explicitly : " As Eve/' he says, " becoming disobedient,
became the cause of death to herself and to all mankind,
so Mary too, having the predestined Man, and yet a Virgin,
being obedient, became cause of salvation both to herself
and to all mankind." 3 This becomes the received doctrine
in the Post-nicene Church.
One well-known instance occurs in the history of the
third century of St. Mary's interposition, and it is remark-
able from the names of the two persons, who were, one the
subject, the other the historian of it. St. Gregory JSTyssen,
a native of Cappadocia in the fourth century, relates that
his name-sake Bishop of Neo-csesarea, surnamed Thauma-
turgus, in the preceding century, shortly before he was
called to the priesthood, received in a vision a Creed, which
is still extant, from St. Mary at the hands of St. John.
The account runs thus : He was deeply pondering theologi-
cal doctrine, which the heretics of the day depraved. " In
such thoughts," says his name-sake of Nyssa, "he was
passing the night, when one appeared, as if inhuman form,
aged in appearance, saintly in the fashion of his garments,
and very venerable both in grace of countenance and
general mien. . . . Following with his eyes his extended
hand, he saw another appearance opposite to the former, in
shape of a woman, but more than human. . , . When his
eyes could not bear the apparition, he heard them convers-
ing together on the subject of his doubts ; and thereby not
only gained a true knowledge of the faith, but learned
their names, as they addressed each other by their respec-
tive appellations. And thus he is said to have heard the
person in woman's shape bid ' John the Evangelist '
disclose to the young man the mystery of godliness ; and
he answered that he was ready to comply in this matter
with the wish of ' the Mother of the Lord/ and enunciated
a formulary, well-turned and complete, and so vanished. "
3 Hser. Hi. 22, § 4.
416 APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE. [CH. X.
Gregory proceeds to rehearse the Creed thus given,
" There is One God, Father of a Living Word," &c.4 Bull,
after quoting it in his work upon the Nicene Faith, refers
to this history of its origin, and adds, " No one should
think it incredible that such a providence should befall a
man whose whole life was conspicuous for revelations and
miracles, as all ecclesiastical writers who have mentioned
him (and who has not ?) witness with one voice." *
3.
It is remarkable that St. Gregory Nazianzen relates an
instance, even more pointed, of St. Mary's intercession,
contemporaneous with this appearance to Thaumaturgus ;
but it is attended with mistake in the narrative, which
weakens its cogency as an evidence of the belief, not indeed
of the fourth century, in which St. Gregory lived, but of
the third. He speaks of a Christian woman having
recourse to the protection of St. Mary, and obtaining the
conversion of a heathen who had attempted to practise on
her by magical arts. They were both martyred.
In both these instances the Blessed Virgin appears
especially in that character of Patroness or Paraclete,
which St. Irenaeus and other Fathers describe, and which
the Medieval Church exhibits, — a loving Mother with
clients.
* Nyss. Opp. t. ii. p. 977. 5 Def. F. N. ii. 12.
CHAPTER XI.
APPLICATION OF THE SIXTH NOTE OF A TRUE
DEVELOPMENT.
CONSERVATIVE ACTION ON ITS PAST.
IT is the general pretext of heretics that they are but
serving and protecting Christianity by their innovations ;
and it is their charge against what by this time we may
surely call the Catholic Church, that her successive defi-
nitions of doctrine have but overlaid and obscured it.
That is, they assume, what we have no wish to deny, that
a true development is that which is conservative of its
original, and a corruption is that which tends to its de-
struction. This has already been set down as a Sixth
Test, discriminative of a development from a corruption,
and must now be applied to the Catholic doctrines ; though
this Essay has so far exceeded its proposed limits, that both
reader and writer may well be weary, and may content
themselves with a brief consideration of the portions of
the subject which remain.
It has been observed already that a strict correspondence
between the various members of a development, and those
of the doctrine from which it is derived, is more than we
have any right to expect. The bodily structure of a grown
man is not merely that of a magnified boy ; he differs from
what he was in his make and proportions ; still manhood
is the perfection of boyhood, adding something of its own,
E e
418 APPLICATION OF THE SIXTH NOTE. [CH. XI.
yet keeping what it finds. " Tit nihil novum," says Yincen-
tius, " proferatur in senibus, quod non in pueris jam an tea
latitaverit." This character of addition, — that is, of a
change which is in one sense real and perceptible, yet
without loss or reversal of what was before, but, on the
contrary, protective and confirmative of it, — in many
respects and in a special way belongs to Christianity.
SECTION I.
VARIOUS INSTANCES.
If we take the simplest and most general view of
its history, as existing in an individual mind, or in the
Church at large, we shall see in it an instance of this
peculiarity. It is the birth of something virtually new,
because latent in what was before. Thus we know that
no temper of mind is acceptable in the Divine Presence
without love ; it is love which makes Christian fear differ
from servile dread, and true faith differ from the faith of
devils; yet in the beginning of the religious life, fear is
the prominent evangelical grace, and love is but latent in
fear, and has in course of time to be developed out of what
seems its contradictory. Then, when it is developed, it
takes that prominent place which fear held before, yet
protecting not superseding it. Love is added, not fear
removed, and the mind is but perfected in grace by what
seems a revolution. " They that sow in tears, reap in joy ;"
yet afterwards still they are " sorrowful," though " alway
rejoicing."
And so was it with the Church at large. She started
with suffering, which turned to victory ; but when she
was set free from the house of her prison, she did not
quit it so much as turn it into a cell. Meekness inherited
the earth ; strength came forth from weakness ; the poor
SECT. I.] VARIOUS INSTANCES. 419
made many rich ; yet meekness and poverty remained.
The rulers of the world were Monks, when they could not
be Martyrs.
2.
Immediately on the overthrow of the heathen power,
two movements simultaneously ran through the world
from East to West, as quickly as the lightning in the
prophecy, a development of worship and of asceticism.
Hence, while the world's first reproach in heathen
times had been that Christianity was a dark malevolent
magic, its second has been that it is a joyous carnal
paganism ; — according to that saying, " We have piped
unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have mourned
unto you, and ye have not lamented. For John came
neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil.
The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say,
Behold a man gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend of
publicans and sinners." Yet our Lord too was " a man of
sorrows " all the while, but softened His austerity by His
gracious gentleness.
3.
The like characteristic attends also on the mystery of
His Incarnation. He was first God and He became man ;
but Eutyches and heretics of his school refused to admit
that He was man, lest they should deny that He was God.
In consequence the Catholic Fathers are frequent and
unanimous in their asseverations, that " the Word " had
become flesh, not to His loss, but by an addition. Each
Nature is distinct, but the created Nature lives in and by
the Eternal. " Non andttendo quod erat, sed sumendo quod
non erat," is the Church's principle. And hence, though
the course of development, as was observed in a former
Chapter, has been to bring into prominence the divine
E e 2
420 APPLICATION OF THE SIXTH NOTE. [CH. XI.
aspect of our Lord's mediation, this has been attended by
even a more open manifestation of the doctrine of His
atoning sufferings. The passion of our Lord is one of
the most imperative and engrossing subjects of Catholic
teaching. It is the great topic of meditations and prayers ;
it is brought into continual remembrance by the sign of
the Cross ; it is preached to the world in the Crucifix ; it
is variously honoured by the many houses of prayer, and
associations of religious men, and pious institutions and
undertakings, which in some way or other are placed under
the name and the shadow of Jesus, or the Saviour, or the
Redeemer, or His Cross, or His Passion, or His sacred
Heart.
4.
Here a singular development may be mentioned of
the doctrine of the Cross, which some have thought so
contrary to its original meaning,1 as to be a manifest cor-
ruption ; I mean the introduction of the Sign of the meek
Jesus into the armies of men, and the use of an emblem
of peace as a protection in battle. If light has no com-
munion with darkness, or Christ with Belial, what has He
to do with Moloch, who would not call down fire on His
enemies, and came not to destroy but to save ? Yet this
seeming anomaly is but one instance of a great law which
is seen in developments generally, that changes which
appear at first sight to contradict that out of which they
grew, are really its protection or illustration. Our Lord
Himself is represented in the Prophets as a combatant in-
flicting wounds while He received them, as coming from
Bozrah with dyed garments, sprinkled and red in His
apparel with the blood of His enemies ; and, whereas no
war is lawful but what is just, it surely beseems that they
who are engaged in so dreadful a commission as that of
1 Supr. p. 173.
SECT. I.] VARIOUS INSTANCES. 421
taking away life at the price of their own, should at least
have the support of His Presence, and h'ght under the
mystical influence of His Name, who redeemed His elect
as a combatant by the Blood of Atonement, with the
slaughter of His foes, the sudden overthrow of the Jews,
and the slow and awful fall of the Pagan Empire. And
if the wars of Christian nations have often been unjust,
this is a reason against much more than the use of religious
symbols by the parties who engage in them, though the
pretence of religion may increase the sin.
5.
The same rule of development has been observed in
respect of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. It is the
objection of the School of Socinus, that belief in the Trinity
is destructive of any true maintenance of the Divine
Unity, however strongly the latter may be professed ; but
Petavius, as we have seen,2 sets it down as one especial
recommendation of the Catholic doctrine, that it subserves
that original truth which at first sight it does but obscure
and compromise.
6.
This representation of the consistency of the Catholic
system will be found to be true, even in respect of those
peculiarities of it, which have been considered by Pro-
testants most open to the charge of corruption and inno-
vation. It is maintained, for instance, that the veneration
paid to Images in the Catholic Church directly contradicts
the command of Scripture, and the usage of the primitive
ages. As to primitive usage, that part of the subject has
been incidentally observed upon already ; here I will make
one remark on the argument from Scripture.
It may be reasonably questioned, then, whether the
» Supr. p. 174.
422 APPLICATION OF THE SIXTH NOTE. [CH. XI.
Commandment which stands second in our Decalogue, on
which the prohibition of Images is principally grounded,
was intended in its letter for more than temporary ob-
servance. So far is certain, that, though none could surpass
the Jews in its literal observance, nevertheless this did not
save them from the punishments attached to the violation
of it. If this be so, the literal observance is not its true
and evangelical import.
7.
" When the generation to come of your children shall
rise up after you," says their inspired lawgiver, " and the
stranger that shall come from a far land shall say, when
they see the plagues of that land, and its sicknesses which
the Lord hath laid upon it ; and that the whole land
thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not
sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, . . .
even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done
thus unto this land ? What meaneth the heat of this great
anger ? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken
the covenants of the Lord God of their fathers, which He
made with them when He brought them forth out of the
land of Egypt ; for they went and served other gods, and
worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom
He had not given them." Now the Jews of our Lord's
day did not keep this covenant, for they incurred the
penalty ; yet they kept the letter of the Commandment
rigidly, and were known among the heathen far and wide
for their devotion to the " Lord God of their fathers who
brought them out of the land of Egypt/' and for their
abhorrence of the " gods whom He had not given them."
If then adherence to the letter was no protection to the
Jews, departure from the letter may be no guilt in
Christians.
It should be observed, moreover, that there certainly is
SECT. II.] DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 423
a difference between the two covenants in their respective
view of symbols of the Almightj7". In the Old, it was
blasphemy to represent Him under " the similitude of a
calf that eateth hay ;" in the New, the Third Person of
the Holy Trinity has signified His Presence by the appear-
ance of a Dove, and the Second Person has presented His
sacred Humanity for worship under the name of the
Lamb.
8.
It follows that, if the letter of the Decalogue is but
partially binding on Christians, it is as justifiable, in
setting it before persons under instruction, to omit such
parts as do not apply to them, as, when we quote passages
from the Pentateuch in Sermons or Lectures generally, to
pass over verses which refer simply to the temporal
promises or the ceremonial law, a practice which we allow
without any intention or appearance of dealing irreve-
rently with the sacred text.
SECTION II.
DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
It has been anxiously asked, whether the honours
paid to St. Mary, which have grown out of devotion to her
Almighty Lord and Son, do not, in fact, tend to weaken
that devotion ; and whether, from the nature of the case,
it is possible so to exalt a creature without withdrawing
the heart from the Creator.
In addition to what has been said on this subject in fore-
going Chapters, I would here observe that the question is
one of fact, not of presumption or conjecture. The abstract
lawfulness of the honours paid to St. Mary, and their dis-
tinction in theory from the incommunicable worship paid
424 APPLICATION OF THE SIXTH NOTE. [CH. XI.
to God, are points which, have already been dwelt upon ;
but here the question turns upon their practicability or
expedience, which must be determined by the fact whether
they are practicable, and whether they have been found to
be expedient.
1.
Here I observe, first, that, to those who admit the
authority of the Fathers of Ephesus, the question is in no
slight degree answered by their sanction of the 0eoTOKo<;,oT
"Mother of God," as a title of St. Mary, and as given in order
to protect the doctrine of the Incarnation, and to preserve
the faith of Catholics from a specious Humanitarianism.
And if we take a survey at least of Europe, we shall find
that it is not those religious communions which are cha-
racterized by devotion towards the Blessed Virgin that
have ceased to adore her Eternal Son, but those very
bodies which (being unfettered by State law) have re-
nounced that devotion. The regard for His glory,
which was professed in that keen jealousy of her exalta-
tion, has not been supported by the event. They who
were accused of worshipping a creature in His stead, still
worship Him ; their accusers, who hoped to worship Him
so purely, they, wherever obstacles to the development of
their principles have been removed, have ceased to worship
Him altogether.
2.
Next, it must be observed, that the tone of the devotion
paid to the Blessed Mary is altogether distinct from that
which is paid to her Eternal Son, and to the Holy Trinity,
as we must certainly allow on inspection of the Catholic
services. The supreme and true worship paid to the
Almighty is severe, profound, awful, as well as tender,
confiding, and dutiful. Christ is addressed as true God,
SECT. IT.] DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 425
while He is true Man ; as our Creator and Judge, while
He is most loving, gentle, and gracious. On the other
hand, towards St. Mary the language employed is affec-
tionate and ardent, as towards a mere child of Adam ;
though subdued, as coming from her sinful kindred.
How different, for instance, is the tone of the Dies Irce
from that of the Stabat Mater. In the " Tristis et aiflicta
Mater Unigeniti," in the " Yirgo virginum prceclara Mihi
jam non sis amara, Pcenas mecum divide," in the " Fac
me vere tecuni flere," we have an expression of the feelings
with which we regard one who is a creature and a mere
human being; but in the " Rex tremendse majestatis qui
salvandos salvas gratis, salva me Fons pietatis," the "Ne
me perdas ilia die," the " Juste judex ultionis, donum fac
remissionis," the " Oro supplex et acclinis, cor contritum
quasi ciDis," the " Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem,"
we hear the voice of the creature raised in hope and love,
yet in deep awe to his Creator, Infinite Benefactor, and
Judge.
Or again, how distinct is the language of the Breviary
Services on the Festival of Pentecost, or of the Holy
Trinity, from the language of the Services for the Assump-
tion ! How indescribably majestic, solemn, and soothing
is the "Yeni Creator Spiritus," the "Altissimi donum
Dei, Fons vivus, ignis, charitas," or the " Yera et una
Trinitas, una et summa Deitas, sancta et una Unitas," the
" Spes nostra, salus nostra, honor noster, 0 beata Trinitas,"
the " Charitas Pater, gratia Filius, communicatio Spiritus
Sanctus, 0 beata Trinitas ;" " Libera nos, salva nos, vivi-
fica nos, 0 beata Trinitas ! " How fond, on the contrary,
how full of sympathy and affection, how stirring and
animating, in the Ofiice for the Assumption, is the " Yirgo
prudentissima, quo progrederis, quasi aurora valde rutilans ?
filia Sion, tota formosa et suavis es, pulcra ut luna, electa
ut sol ;" the " Sicut dies verni circumdabant earn flores
426 APPLICATION OF THE SIXTH NOTE. [CH. XI.
rosarum, et lilia convallium ;" the " Maria Yirgo assumpta
est ad aethereum thalamum in quo Rex regum stellato
sedet solio ;" and the " Gaudent Angeli, laudantes bene-
dicunt Dominum." And so again, the Antiphon, the
" Ad te clamamus exules filii Hevse, ad te suspiramus
gementes et flentes in hac lacrymarum valle," and et Eia
ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos
converte/' and " 0 clemens, O pia, 0 dulcis Virgo Maria."
Or the Hymn, " Ave Maris Stella, Dei Mater alma,'"' and
" Yirgo singularis, inter omnes mitis, nos culpis solutos,
mites fac et castes."
3.
Nor does it avail to object that, in this contrast of de-
votional exercises, the human will supplant the Divine,
from the infirmity of our nature ; for, I repeat, the question
is one of fact, whether it has done so. And next it must
be asked, whether the character of much of the Protestant
devotion towards our Lord has been that of adoration at all;
and not rather such as we pay to an excellent human
being, that is, no higher devotion than that which Catholics
pay to St. Mary, differing from it, however, in often being
familiar, rude, and earthly. Carnal minds will ever
create a carnal worship for themselves ; and to forbid
them the service of the Saints will have no tendency to
teach them the worship of God.
Moreover, it must be observed, what is very important,
that great and constant as is the devotion which the
Catholic pays to the Blessed Mary, it has a special pro-
vince, and has far more connexion with the public services
and the festive aspect of Christianity, and with certain
extraordinary offices which she holds, than with what is
strictly personal and primary in religion.
Two instances will serve in illustration of this, and they
are but samples of many others.3
8 E. g. the " De Imitatioue," the " Introduction a la Yie Devote/' the
SECT. II.] DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 427
(1.) For example, St. Ignatius* Spiritual Exercises are
among the most approved methods of devotion in the
modern Catholic Church ; they proceed from one of the
most celebrated of her Saints, and have the praise of
Popes, and of the most eminent masters of the spiritual
life. A Bull of Paul the Third's " approves, praises, and
sanctions all and everything contained in them ;" in-
dulgences are granted to the performance of them by the
same Pope, by Alexander the Seventh, and by Benedict
the Fourteenth. St. Carlo Borromeo declared that he
learned more from them than from all other books together ;
St. Francis de Sales calls them *f a holy method of refor-
mation," and they are the model on which all the ex-
traordinary devotions of religious men or bodies, and the
course of missions, are conducted. If there is a document
which is the authoritative exponent of the inward com-
munion of the members of the modern Catholic Church
with their God and Saviour, it is this work.
The Exercises are directed to the removal of obstacles in
the way of the soul's receiving and profiting by the gifts
of God. They undertake to effect this in three ways ; by
removing all objects of this world, and, as it were, bring-
ing the soul "into the solitude where God may speak to its
heart ;" next, by setting before it the ultimate end of man,
and its own deviations from it, the beauty of holiness, and
the pattern of Christ ; and, lastly, by giving rules for its
correction. They consist of a course of prayers, medita-
tions, self-examinations, and the like, which in its complete
" Spiritual Combat," the " Anima Divota," the ** Paradisus Animse," the
" Regula Cleri," the " Garden of the Soul," &c. &C; [Also, the Roman
Catechism, drawn up expressly for Parish instruction, a book in which, out
of nearly 600 pages, scarcely half-a-dozen make mention of the Blessed
Virgin, though without any disparagement thereby, or thought of disparage*
ment, of her special prerogatives.]
428 APPLICATION OF THE SIXTH NOTE. [CH. XI.
extent lasts thirty days ; and these are divided into three
stages, — the Via Purgatwa, in which sin is the main
subject of consideration ; the Via Illuminativa, which is
devoted to the contemplation of our Lord's passion,
involving the process of the determination of our calling ;
and the Via Tfnitiva, in which we proceed to the contem-
plation of our Lord's resurrection and ascension.
5.
No more need be added in order to introduce the remark
for which I have referred to these Exercises ; viz. that in
a work so highly sanctioned, so widely received, so inti-
mately bearing upon the most sacred points of personal
religion, very slight mention occurs of devotion to the
Blessed Virgin, Mother of God. There is one mention of
her in the rule given for the first Prelude or preparation,
in which the person meditating is directed to consider as
before him a church, or other place with Christ in it, St.
Mary, and whatever else is suitable to the subject of
meditation. Another is in the third Exercise, in which
one of the three addresses is made to our Lady, Christ's
Mother, requesting earnestly " her intercession with her
Son;" to which is to be added the Ave Mary. In
the beginning of the Second Week there is a form of
offering ourselves to God in the presence of " His infinite
goodness/' and with the witness of His " glorious Virgin
Mother Mary, and the whole host of heaven." At the
end of the Meditation upon the Angel Gabriel's mission
to St. Mary, there is an address to each Divine Person,
to " the Word Incarnate and to His Mother." In the
Meditation upon the Two Standards, there is an address
prescribed to St. Mary to implore grace from her Son
through her, with an Ave Mary after it.
In the beginning of the Third Week one address is pre-
scribed to Christ ; or three, if devotion incites, to Mother,
SECT. II.] DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 429
Son, and Father. In the description given of three
different modes of prayer we are told, if we would imitate
the Blessed Mary, we must recommend ourselves to her, as
having power with her Son, and presently the Ave Mary,
Salve Itegina, and other forms are prescribed, as is usual after
all prayers. And this is pretty much the whole of the devo-
tion, if it may so be called, which is recommended towards
St. Mary in the course of so many apparently as a hundred
and fifty Meditations, and those chiefly on the events in
our Lord's earthly history as recorded in Scripture. It
would seem then that whatever be the influence of the
doctrines connected with the Blessed Virgin and the Saints
in the Catholic Church, at least they do not impede or
obscure the freest exercise and the fullest manifestation
of the devotional feelings towards God and Christ.
6.
(2.) The other instance which I give in illustration is
of a different kind, but is suitable to mention. About
forty little books have come into my possession which are
in circulation among the laity at Rome, and answer to the
smaller publications of the Christian Knowledge Society
among ourselves. They have been taken almost at hazard
from a number of such works, and are of various lengths ;
some running to as many as two or three hundred pages,
others consisting of scarce a dozen. They may be divided
into three classes : — a third part consists of books on
practical subjects ; another third is upon the Incarnation
and Passion ; and of the rest, a portion is upon the Sacra-
ments, especially the Holy Eucharist, with two or three
for the use of Missions, but the greater part is about the
Blessed Virgin.
As to the class on practical subjects, they are on such as
the following : "La Consolazione degl' Infermi ;" "Pen-
sieri di una donna sul vestire moderno ;" " I/Inferno
430 APPLICATION OF THE SIXTH NOTE. [cH. XI.
Aperto;" "II Purgatorio Aperto ;" St. Alplionso Liguori's
" Massime eterne ;" other Maxims by St. Francis de Sales
for every day in the year ; " Pratica per ben confessarsi e
communicarsi ;" and the like.
The titles of the second class on the Incarnation and
Passion are such as " Gesu dalla Croce al cuore del
peccatore ;" " Novena del Ss. Natale di G. C. ;" " Asso-
ciazione pel culto perpetuo del diviii cuore;" "Compendio
della Passione."
In the third are " II Mese Eucaristico/' ll II divoto di
Maria," Feasts of the Blessed Virgin, &c.
7.
These books in all three divisions are, as even the
titles of some of them show, in great measure made up
of Meditations ; such are the " Breve e pie Medituzioni "
of P. Crasset ; the " Meditazioni per ciascun giorno del
mese sulla Passione ;" the " Meditazioni per Fora Euca-
ristica." Now of these it may be said generally, that in
the body of the Meditation St. Mary is hardly mentioned at
all. For instance, in the Meditations on the Passion, a book
used for distribution, through two hundred and seventy-
seven pages St. Mary is not once named. In the Prayers
for Mass which are added, she is introduced, at the Con-
fiteor, thus, " I pray the Virgin, the Angels, the Apostles,
and all the Saints of heaven to intercede," &c. ; and in the
Preparation for Penance, she is once addressed, after our
Lord, as the Refuge of sinners, with the Saints and
Guardian Angel ; and at the end of the Exercise there is a
similar prayer of four lines for the intercession of St. Mary,
Angels and Saints of heaven. In the Exercise for Com-
munion, in a prayer to our Lord, " my only and infinite
good, my treasure, my life, my paradise, my all,"" the
merits of the Saints are mentioned, " especially of St.
SECT. II.] DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 431
Mary." She is also mentioned with Angels and Saints at
the termination.
In a collection of " Spiritual Lauds " for Missions, of
thirty-six Hymns, we find as many as eleven addressed to
St. Mary, or relating to her, among which are translations
of the Ace Man's Stella, and the Stabat Hater, and the
Salve Regina ; and one is on " the sinner's reliance on
Mary." Five, however, which are upon Repentance, are
entirely engaged upon the subjects of our Lord and sin,
with the exception of an address to St. Mary at the end of
two of them. Seven others, upon sin, the Crucifixion, and
the Four Last Things, do not mention the Blessed Virgin's
name.
To the Manual for the Perpetual Adoration of the
Divine Heart of Jesus there is appended one chapter on
the Immaculate Conception.
One of - the most important of these books is the
French Pensez-y bleu, which seems a favourite, since thero
are two translations of it, one of them being the fifteenth
edition ; and it is used for distribution in Missions. In
, these reflections there is scarcely a word said of St. Mary.
At the end there is a Method of reciting the Crown of the
Seven Dolours of the Virgin Mary, which contains seven
prayers to her, and the Stabat Mater.
One of the longest in the whole collection is a tract
consisting principally of Meditations on the Holy Com-
munion ; under the title of the " Eucharistic Month/* as
already mentioned. In these " Preparations," " Aspira-
tions/' &c., St. Mary is but once mentioned, and that in a
prayer addressed to our Lord. " 0 my sweetest Brother,"
it says with an allusion to the Canticles, " who, being made
Man for my salvation, hast sucked the milk from the vir-
ginal breast of her, who is my Mother by grace," &c. In
432 APPLICATION OF THE SIXTH NOTE. [CH. XI.
a small " Instruction " given to children on their first
Communion, there are the following questions and answers :
" Is our Lady in the Host ? No. Are the Angels and
the Saints ? No. Why not ? Because they have no
place there."
9.
Now coming to those in the third class, which directly
relate to the Blessed Mary, such as "Esercizio ad Onore
dell' addolorato cuore di Maria," " Novena di Preparazione
alia festa delP Assunzione," " Li Quindici Misteri del
Santo Rosario/' the principal is Father Segneri's " II
divoto di Maria," which requires a distinct notice. It
is far from the intention of these remarks to deny the
high place which the Holy Virgin holds in the devotion
of Catholics ; I am but bringing evidence of its not inter-
fering with that incommunicable and awful relation
which exists between the creature and the Creator ;
and, if the foregoing instances show, as far as they go,
that that relation is preserved inviolate in such honours
as are paid to St. Mary, so will this treatise throw light
upon the rationale by which the distinction is preserved
between the worship of God and the honour of an exalted
creature, and that in singular accordance with the remarks
made in the foregoing Section.
10.
This work of Segneri is written against persons who
continue in sins under pretence of their devotion to St.
Mary, and in consequence he is led to draw out the idea
which good Catholics have of her. The idea is this, that
she is absolutely the first of created beings. Thus the
treatise says, that " God might have easily made a more
beautiful firmament, and a greener earth, but it was not
possible to make a higher Mother than the Yirgin Mary ;
SECT. II.] DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 433
and in her formation there has been conferred on mere
creatures all the glory of which they are capable, remain-
ing mere creatures/' p. 34. • And as containing all created
perfection, she has all those attributes, which, as was
noticed above, the Arians and other heretics applied to our
Lord, and which the Church denied of Him as infinitely
below His Supreme Majesty. Thus she is " the created
Idea in the making of the world," p. 20 ; " which, as
being a more exact copy of the Incarnate Idea than was
elsewhere to be found, was used as the original of the rest
of the creation," p. 21. To her are applied the words,
" Ego primogenita prodivi ex ore Altissimi," because she
was predestinated in the Eternal Mind coevally with the
Incarnation of her Divine Son. But to Him alone the
title of Wisdom Incarnate is reserved, p. 25. Again,
Christ is the First-born by nature ; the Virgin in a less
sublime order, viz. that of adoption. Again, if omnipotence
is ascribed to her, it is a participated omnipotence (as she
and all Saints have a participated son ship, divinity, glory,
holiness, and worship), and is explained by the words,
" Quod Deus imperio, tu prece, Yirgo, potes."
11.
Again, a special office is assigned to the Blessed Virgin,
that is, special as compared with all other Saints ; but it
is marked off with the utmost precision from that assigned
to our Lord. Thus she is said to have been made " the
arbitress of every effect coming from Grod's mercy." Be-
cause she is the Mother of God, the salvation of mankind
is said to be given to her prayers " de congruo, but de con-
digno it is due only to the blood of the Redeemer," p. 113.
" Merit is ascribed to Christ, and prayer to St. Mary,
p. 162. The whole maybe expressed in the words, " Unica
spes mea Jesus, et post Jesum Virgo Maria. Amen."
Again, a distinct cultus is assigned to St. Mary, but the
F f
434 APPLICATION OF THE SIXTH NOTE. [CHAP. XI.
reason of it is said to be the transcendent dignity of her Son.
" A particular cultus is due to the Virgin beyond compari-
son greater than that given to any other Saint, because
her dignity belongs to another order, namely to one which
in some sense belongs to the order of the Hypostatic Union
itself, and is necessarily connected with it," p. 41. And
" Her being the Mother of God is the source of all the
extraordinary honours due to Mary," p. 35.
It is remarkable that the " Monstra te esse Matrem " is
explained, p. 158, as " Show thyself to be our Mother ;"
an interpretation which I think I have found elsewhere in
these Tracts, and also in a book commonly used in
religious houses, called the " Journal of Meditations," and
elsewhere.4
It must be kept in mind that my object here is not to
prove the dogmatic accuracy of what these popular publi-
cations teach concerning the prerogatives of the Blessed
Virgin, but to show that that teaching is not such as to
obscure the divine glory of her Son. We must ask for
clearer evidence before we are able to admit so grave a
charge ; and so much may suffice on the Sixth Test of
fidelity in the development of an idea, as applied to the
Catholic system.
* [Vid. Via Media, vol. ii. pp. 121, 2.]
CHAPTER XII.
APPLICATION OF THE SEVENTH NOTE OF A TRUE
DEVELOPMENT.
CHRONIC VIGOUR.
WE have arrived at length at the seventh and last test,
which was laid down when we started, for distinguishing
the true development of an idea from its corruptions
and perversions : it is this. A corruption, if vigorous,
is of brief duration, runs itself out quickly, and ends in
death ; on the other hand, if it lasts, it fails in vigour
and passes into a decay. This general law gives us ad-
ditional assistance in determining the character of the
developments of Christianity commonly called Catholic.
2.
"When we consider the succession of ages during which
the Catholic system has endured, the severity of the trials
it has undergone, the sudden and wonderful changes with-
out and within which have befallen it, the incessant mental
activity and the intellectual gifts of its maintainers, the
enthusiasm which it has kindled, the fury of the contro-
versies which have been carried on among its professors,
the impetuosity of the assaults made upon it, the ever-
increasing responsibilities to which it has been committed
by the continuous development of its dogmas, it is quite
inconceivable that it should not have been broken up and
p f 2
436 APPLICATION OF THE SEVENTH NOTE. [CH. XII.
lost, were it a corruption of Christianity. Yet it is still
living, if there be a living religion or philosophy in the
world ; vigorous, energetic, persuasive, progressive ; vires
acquirit eundo ; it grows and is not overgrown ; it
spreads out, yet is not enfeebled ; it is ever germinating,
yet ever consistent with itself. Corruptions indeed are to
be found which sleep and are suspended ; and these, as I
have said, are usually called " decays :" such is not the
case with Catholicity ; it does not sleep, it is not stationary
even now ; and that its long series of developments should
be corruptions would be an instance of sustained error, so
novel, so unaccountable, so preternatural, as to be little
short of a miracle, and to rival those manifestations of
Divine Power which constitute the evidence of Christianity.
"We sometimes view with surprise and awe the degree of
pain and disarrangement which the human frame can
undergo without succumbing ; yet at length there comes
an end. Fevers have their crisis, fatal or favourable ; but
this corruption of a thousand years, if corruption it be, has
ever been growing nearer death, yet never reaching it, and
has been strengthened, not debilitated, by its excesses.
3.
For instance : when the Empire was converted, multi-
tudes, as is very plain, came into the Church on but par-
tially religious motives, and with habits and opinions
infected with the false worships which they had professedly
abandoned. History shows us what anxiety and effort it
cost her rulers to keep Paganism out of her pale. To this
tendency must be added the hazard which attended on the
development of the Catholic ritual, such as the honours
publicly assigned to Saints and Martyrs, the formal vene-
ration of their relics, ^and the usages and observances which
followed. What was to hinder the rise of a sort of refined
Pantheism, and the overthrow of dogmatism paripassu with
CH. XII.] CHRONIC VIGOUR. 437
the multiplication of heavenly intercessors and patrons ?
If what is called in reproach " Saint- worship " resembled
the polytheism which it supplanted, or was a corruption,
how did Dogmatism survive ? Dogmatism is a religion's
profession of its own reality as contrasted with other
systems ; but polytheists are liberals, and hold that one
religion is as good as another. Yet the theological system
was developing and strengthening, as well as the monastic
rule, which is intensely anti-pantheistic, all the while the
ritual was assimilating itself, as Protestants say, to the
Paganism of former ages.
4.
Nor was the development of dogmatic theology, which
was then taking place, a silent and spontaneous process.
It was wrought out and carried through under the fiercest
controversies, and amid the most fearful risks. The
Catholic faith was placed in a succession of perils, and
rocked to and fro like a vessel at sea. Large portions of
Christendom were, one after another, in heresy or in
schism ; the leading Churches and the most authoritative
schools fell from time to time into serious error ; three
Popes, Liberius, Vigilius, Honorius, have left to posterity
the burden of their defence : but these disorders were no
interruption to the sustained and steady march of the
sacred science from implicit belief to formal statement.
The series of ecclesiastical decisions, in which its progress
was ever and anon signified, alternate between the one and
the other side of the theological dogma especially in question,
as if fashioning it into sha.pe by opposite strokes. The con-
troversy began in Apollinaris, who confused or denied the
Two Natures in Christ, and was condemned by Pope Dama-
sus. A reaction followed, and Theodore of Mopsuestia
suggested by his teaching the doctrine of Two Persons.
After Nestorius had brought that heresy into public view,
438 APPLICATION OF THE SEVENTH NOTE. [CH. XII.
and had incurred in consequence the anathema of the
Third Ecumenical Council, the current of controversy again
shifted its direction ; for Eutyches appeared, maintained
the One Nature, and was condemned at Chalcedon. Some-
thing however was still wanting to the overthrow of the
Nestorian doctrine of Two Persons, and the Fifth Council
was formally directed against the writings of Theodore and
his party. Then followed the Monothelite heresy, which
was a revival of the Eutychian or Monophysite, and was
condemned in the Sixth. Lastly, Nestorianism once more
showed itself in the Adoptionists of Spain, and gave
occasion to the great Council of Frankfort. Any one false
step would have thrown the whole theory of the doctrine
into irretrievable confusion ; but it was as if some one in-
dividual and perspicacious intellect, to speak humanly,
ruled the theological discussion from first to last. That in
the long course of centuries, and in spite of the failure, in
points of detail, of the most gifted Fathers and Saints, the
Church thus wrought out the one and only consistent
theory which can be taken on the great doctrine in dispute,
proves how clear, simple, and exact her vision of that
doctrine was. But it proves more than this. Is it not
utterly incredible, that with this thorough comprehen-
sion of so great a mystery, as far as the human mind can
know it, she should be at that very time in the commission
of the grossest errors in religious worship, and should be
hiding the God and Mediator, whose Incarnation she
contemplated with so clear an intellect, behind a crowd of
idols ?
5.
The integrity of the Catholic developments is still more
evident when they are viewed in contrast with the history
of other doctrinal systems. Philosophies and religions of
the world have each its day, and are parts of a succession.
They supplant and are in turn supplanted. But the Catho-
CH, XII.] CHRONIC VIGOUR. 439
lie religion alone has had no limits ; it alone has ever been
greater than the emergence, and can do what others cannot
do. If it were a falsehood, or a corruption, like the systems
of men, it would be weak as they are ; whereas it is able
even to impart to them a strength which they have not,
and it uses them for its own purposes, and locates them
in its own territory. The Church can extract good from
evil, or at least gets no harm from it. She inherits the
promise made to the disciples, that they should take up
serpents, and, if they drank any deadly thing, it should
not hurt them. When evil has clung to her, and the
barbarian people have looked on with curiosity or in malice,
till she should have swollen or fallen down suddenly, she
has shaken the venomous beast into the fire, and felt no
harm.
6.
Eusebius has set before us this attribute of Catholicism
in a passage in his history. " These attempts," he says,
speaking of the acts of the enemy, " did not long avail
him, Truth ever consolidating itself, and, as time goes on,
shining into broader day. For, while the devices of
adversaries were extinguished at once, undone by their
very impetuosity, — one heresy after another presenting its
own novelty, the former specimens ever dissolving and
wasting variously in manifold and multiform shapes, — the
brightness of the Catholic and only true Church went
forward increasing and enlarging, yet ever in the same
things, and in the same way, beaming on the whole race
of Greeks and barbaria-ns with the awfulness, and simplicity,
and nobleness, and sobriety, and purity of its divine polity
and philosophy. Thus the calumny against our whole
creed died with its day, and there continued alone our
Discipline, sovereign among all, and acknowledged to be
pre-eminent in awfulness, sobriety, and divine and philoso-
phical doctrines ; so that no one of this day dares to cast
440 APPLICATION OF THE SEVENTH NOTE. [cH. XII.
any base reproach upon our faith, nor any calumny, such
as it was once usual for our enemies to use." l
7.
The Psalmist says, " "We went through fire and water ;"
nor is it possible to imagine trials fiercer or more various
than those from which Catholicism has come forth unin-
jured, as out of the Egyptian sea or the Babylonian furnace.
First of all were the bitter persecutions of the Pagan Empire
in the early centuries; then its sudden conversion, the
liberty of Christian worship, the development of the cultus
sanctorum, and the reception of Monachism into the eccle-
siastical system. Then came the irruption of the barbarians,
and the occupation by them of the orbis terrarum from the
North, and by the Saracens from the South. Meanwhile
the anxious and protracted controversy concerning the
Incarnation hung like some terrible disease upon the faith
of the Church. Then came the time of thick darkness ;
and afterwards two great struggles, one with the material
power, the other with the intellect, of the world, terminat-
ing in the ecclesiastical monarchy, and in the theology of
the schools. And lastly came the great changes consequent
upon the controversies of the sixteenth century. Is it
conceivable that any one of those heresies, with which
ecclesiastical history abounds, should have gone through a
hundredth part of these trials, yet have come out of them
so nearly what it was before, as Catholicism has done ?
Could such a theology as Arianism have lasted through the
scholastic contest? or Montanism have endured to possess
the world, without coming to a crisis, and failing? or could
the imbecility of the Manichean system, as a religion, have
escaped exposure, had it been brought into conflict with
the barbarians of the Empire, or the feudal system ?
1 Euseb. Hist, iv, 7, ap. Church of the Fathers [Historical Sketches,
vol. i. p. 408],
CH. XII.] CHRONIC VIGOUR. 441
8.
A similar contrast discovers itself in the respective effects
and fortunes of certain influential principles or usages,
which have both been introduced into the Catholic system,
and are seen in operation elsewhere. When a system
really is corrupt, powerful agents, when applied to it, do but
develope that corruption, and bring it the more speedily to
an end. They stimulate it preternaturally ; it puts forth its
strength, and dies in some memorable act. Very different
has been the history of Catholicism, when it has committed
itself to such formidable influences. It has borne, and can
bear, principles or doctrines, which in other systems of
religion quickly degenerate into fanaticism or infidelity.
This might be shown at great length in the history of the
Aristotelic philosophy within and without the Church ; or
in the history of Monachism, or of Mysticism ; — not that
there has not been at first a conflict between these powerful
and unruly elements and the Divine System into which
they were entering, but that it ended in the victory of
Catholicism. The theology of St. Thomas, nay of the
Church of his period, is built on that very Aristotelism,
which the early Fathers denounce as the source of all mis-
belief, and in particular of the Arian and Monophysite here-
sies. The exercises of asceticism, which are so graceful in St.
Antony, so touching in St. Basil, and so awful in St. Grer-
manus, do but become a melancholy and gloomy supersti-
tion even in the most pious persons who are cut off from
Catholic communion. And while the highest devotion in
the Church is the mystical, and contemplation has been
the token of the most singularly favoured Saints, we need
not look deeply into the history of modern sects, for
evidence of the excesses in conduct, or the errors in doctrine,
to which mystics have been commonly led, who have boasted
of their possession of reformed truth, and have rejected
what they called the corruptions of Catholicism.
442 APPLICATION OF THE SEVENTH NOTE. [CH. XII.
9.
It is true, there have been seasons when, from the opera-
tion of external or internal causes, the Church has been
thrown into what was almost a state of deliquium; but her
wonderful revivals, while the world was triumphing over
her, is a further evidence of the absence of corruption in
the system of doctrine and worship into which she has
developed. If corruption be an incipient disorganization,
surely an abrupt and absolute recurrence to the former state
of vigour, after an interval, is even less conceivable than
a corruption that is permanent. Now this is the case with
the revivals I speak of. After violent exertion men are
exhausted and fall asleep ; they awake the same as before,
refreshed by the temporary cessation of their activity ; and
such has been the slumber and such the restoration of the
Church. She pauses in her course, and almost suspends
her functions ; she rises again, and she is herself once
more ; all things are in their place and ready for action.
Doctrine is where it was, and usage, and precedence, and
principle, and policy ; there may be changes, but they
are consolidations or adaptations ; all is unequivocal and
determinate, with an identity which there is no disputing.
Indeed it is one of the most popular charges against the
Catholic Church at this very time, that she is " incorrigi-
ble •" — change she cannot, if we listen to St. Athanasius
or St. Leo ; change she never will, if we believe the
controversialist or alarmist of the present day.
CH.'XII.] CHRONIC VIGOm. 443
Sucli were the thoughts concerning the " Blessed Vision
of Peace/' of one whose long-continued petition had been
that the Most Merciful would not despise the work of His
own Hands, nor leave him to himself; — while yet his
eyes were dim, and his breast laden, and he could but
employ Reason in the things of Faith. And now, dear
Reader, time is short, eternity is long. Put not from you
what you have here found ; regard it not as mere matter
of present controversy ; set not out resolved to refute it,
and looking about for the best way of doing so ; seduce
not yourself with the imagination that it comes of disap-
pointment, or disgust, or restlessness, or wounded feeling,
or undue sensibility, or other weakness. Wrap not
yourself round in the associations of years past ; nor
determine that to be truth which you wish to be so, nor
make an idol of cherished anticipations. Time is short,
eternity is long.
DIMITTIS SEEVUM TUUM, DoMINE,
SECUNDUM VEBBUM TUUM IN PACE :
QUIA VIDEEUNT OCULI MEI SALUTAEE TUUM.
THE END.
PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.
1 — 8. PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SEEMONS. (Rivingtons.}
9. SERMONS ON SUBJECTS OF THE DAT. (Rivingtons.}
10. UNIVERSITY SERMONS. (Riving tons.}
11. DOCTRINE OP JUSTIFICATION. (Rivingtons.}
12. DISCUSSIONS AND ARGUMENTS. 1. How to accomplish it.
2. The Antichrist of the Fa'hers. 3. Scripture and the
Creed. 4. Tarn worth Reading- Room. 5. Who's to blame?
6. An Argument for Christianity. (Pickering.}
13. Two ESSAYS ON MIRACLES. 1. Of Scripture. 2. Of Eccle-
siastical History. (Pickering.}
14, 15. ESSAYS CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL, Two. VOLUMES WITH
NOTES. 1. Poetry. 2. Rationalism. 3. De la Mennais.
4. Palmer on Faith and Unity. 5. St. Ignatius. 6. Pro-
spects of the Anglican Church. 7. The Anglo-American
Church. 8. Countess of Huntingdon. 9. Catholicity of
the Anglican Church. 10. The Antichrist of Protestants.
11. Milman's Christianity. 12. Reformation of the Eleventh
Century. 13. Private Judgment. 14. Davison. 15.
Keble. (Pickering.}
16, 17. VIA MEDIA, Two VOLUMES WITH NOTES. 1. Vol. Pro-
phetical Office of the Church. 2. Vol. Occasional Letters and
Tracts. (Pickering.}
18. ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
(Pickering.}
19, 20. DIFFICULTIES OF ANGLICANS, Two VOLUMES. 1. Vol.
Twelve Lectures. 2. Vol. Letters to Dr. Pusey, and to the
Duke of Norfolk. (Burns and Oates, and Pickering.}
PUBLICATIONS (continued}.
21. PBESENT POSITION OF CATHOLICS IN ENGLAND. (Sums
and Oates.)
22. SEEMONS TO MIXED CONGEEGATIONS. (Burns and Oates.)
23. OCCASIONAL SEEMONS. (Burns and Oates.)
24. IDEA OF A UNIVEESITY. 1. Nine Discourses. 2. Occasional
Lectures and Essays. (Pickering.)
25. ESSAY ON ASSENT. (Burns and Oates.)
26. ANNOTATED TEANSLATION OF ATHANASIUS. (Parker.)
27. THEOLOGICAL TEACTS. 1. Dissertatiunculse. 2. Doctrinal
Causes of Arianism. 3. Apollinarianisra. 4. St. Cyril's
Formula. 5. Ordo de Tempore. 6. Douay Version of
Scripture. (Pickering.)
28. THE ASIANS OF THE FOUETH CENTUEY. (Pickering.)
29 — 31. HISTOEICAL SKETCHES. THREE VOLUMES. 1. The Turks.
2. Cicero. 3. Apollonius. 4. Primitive Christianity.
5. Church of the Fathers. 6. St. Chrysostom. 7. Theo-
doret. 8. St. Benedict. 9. Benedictine Schools. 10.
Universities. 11. Northmen and Normans. 12. Medieval
Oxford. 13. Convocation of Canterbury. (Pickering.)
32. Loss AND GAIN. (Burns and Oates, and Pickering.)
33. CALLISTA. (Burns and Oates, and Pickering)
34. VEESES ON VABIOUS OCCASIONS. (Burns and Oates.)
35. APOLOGIA PEO VITA SUA. (Longman)
LONDON :
GILBEET AND EIVINGTON, PRINTEBS,
ST. JOHN'S SQTJAEE.
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